


Snapshots From a Possible Future

by tigs



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-31
Updated: 2009-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 08:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 71,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigs/pseuds/tigs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which it begins at a party, ends at a beginning, there are new bands, old bands, Celine Dion covers, bands playing cowbells, late night phone calls, cabarets, pool parties, grand openings, trips down memory lane, feather boas, and an oblivious Patrick Stump. Otherwise known as completely self-indulgent future!fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**1\. The Party**

  
So, Patrick runs into Spencer at some party. Not a Hollywood thing, but a DecayDance thing--past, present and introducing the future--10 years later and all that, and there are a lot of people there: Joe and Andy, of course. All of The Hush Sound, Cobra Starship, Gym Class Heroes, The Academy Is.... Spencer and Ryan and Jon and Brendon and a few hundred of Pete's nearest and dearest. And, see, it's a little bit like deja vu, all of these people in one room again, like a hundred tours over the years, but it's different, too, 'cause, well. Well, they're not over-grown college kids now; no, they're all in their late 20s, mid-30s, early 40s. Pete's wearing a suit--granted, it's a Clandestine suit, which automatically means that it's jacket is a hoodie, but there are still lapels and a fucking carnation poked through a button hole.

Patrick spends the first hour of the party with Pete draped over his shoulder as Pete greets people. "You know Patrick," Pete says. "Fucking awesomest producer on any side of the Mississippi," or maybe, "The only reason any of us are where we are today," and the person, whoever it is, will nod and say, "Yeah, yeah. It's true."

Patrick'll just pull his hat a little farther down over his eyes and elbow Pete in the ribs and Pete will grunt and say, "Fine, yes, I'll behave. I'll tell them that you were just holding me back all those years." But then he aims them at another group of people and he'll start right up again, just like always.

An hour in, though, Patrick manages to extract himself from Pete's clutches and he grabs a glass of something--sweet, with a bite, but also blue, and Patrick doesn't even want to know--and the next thing he knows, he's walking across the room towards where Spencer's standing, talking with Greta, and he hears mentions of Playdoh and Legos and when he looks, he sees that Greta's second child is pretty much most of the way here.

"Yeah," Spencer says, "when I got home from Jon and Cassie's last time, I found Lego people stuck in the toes of my Nike's, and some sort of sparkly gel on the inside pocket of my bag? I pretty much decided it was best just to wipe it up and not ask questions."

Greta laughs, a sweet sound, and turns to Patrick, who's sort of hovering. "What about you?" she asks. "Did Joe's girls ever glitter bomb you when they were that age?"

Patrick nods, then shrugs his shoulders and smiles ruefully, because yes, the last time he was at Joe's, he did get glittered, but—

"I just don't know if it was the girls or Joe himself," he says. What he does know is that he's still finding glitter in hats that he didn't even own at the time of the Great Glitter Gate of '15, as Joe took to calling it.

That has Spencer throwing his head back, laughing. He's cut his hair again and the beard is gone, and he's almost looking his 29 years, Patrick thinks. Finally.

"Joe," Greta says fondly. Then: "His girls really are adorable." Twins, six years old now, curly pigtails hanging down to their shoulders and they have their dad (and their honorary uncles) pretty much wrapped around their pinkies. They're already picking up the family business, too: Rachel's rarely separated from her pink Barbie drum kit, and Hannah's taking piano and violin. Joe, Patrick knows, is going to get them both guitars for Hanukkah.

"Yeah," Patrick says. "Yeah, adorable, but really fucking exhausting."

"Tell me about it!" Spencer says. "Don't get me wrong, I love Caitlyn to death, and I think she's just about the cutest thing ever--I mean, she's got Jon's pout!--but then again, I get to arrive, say hi, bring presents, and leave."

"And find glitter in your hats for the next two years," Patrick adds. He touches the brim of his own, almost expecting to see a fleck of color on the tip of his finger when he pulls it away again.

"Or your suitcase," Spencer adds, "and thus in everything you, you know, actually put in the suitcase."

Greta just sighs--put upon, but looking amused, too.

"Just wait until you have your own," she says. "Then it'll be Playdoh in the sheets and crayon on the wall and--"

"And you can stop scaring them any time now, honey," Darren says, joining them and draping an arm around her waist, palm curving around her stomach. She leans back against him.

There are tables scattered around the room, circular, lots of chairs, and Patrick had pretty much been intending to mingle, wander, talk and make the time pass faster, but somehow he finds himself sitting down with Spencer and Greta and Darren. And then Vicky T comes over and one of the Alex's from The Cab and Ryan and Travis and Tom Conrad and there are tour stories from a gazillion years ago and stories of what's happened since and then there's dancing--a live band, fucking _brass_, playing _swing music_, because, as Pete said last month, when he told Patrick about that plan, we're fucking classy, dude!--and then it's pretty much him and Spencer again, a few empty glasses spread out on the table in front of him, and Spencer's saying, "Do you miss it?"

And Patrick, who talked to _Rolling Stone_ last week and _Alternative Press_ the week before and _Spin_ two days ago because he is Patrick Stump, who's had three albums he's produced hit Number 1 on the Billboard Charts this year alone, two of them already platinum, the other gold, says, "Yeah." Then, after a beat: "Fuck it, though, you know? Who am I to be complaining?" Because he's still around. Because he's become more than the lead singer of a pop-punk band from Chicago who made the hoards of teenage girls scream. He's still here and Pete's still here and Joe has his wife and his kids and his own line of guitars that are starting to become a preferred brand and Andy's drumming for a fucking awesome band, making stuff that'll be classic someday, if Patrick's any judge. So yeah, no room to complain.

But still.

"Yeah," Spencer says. "Right. I mean, yeah." He pauses, looking out at the dance floor. "Brendon and I still get together sometimes and jam, you know. Down in his basement, or in my music room. Just the two of us."

He blinks then, sitting up straighter, and when Patrick looks, he sees Pete heading in their direction, a determined look on his face. Spencer keeps talking, though. "Next time you're in Vegas, you should drop by." Then Pete's there, draping an arm across each of their shoulders.

"What the fuck is this, Spencer Smith?" he asks. "Hogging the Stump all to yourself?"

Spencer just rolls his eyes, though, and says, "Yeah, because I really forced him over here. Tied him to his chair and all."

Pete opens his mouth to respond, an almost evil, naughty look in his eye, but before he can speak, Patrick reaches out and pinches his lips closed again. Spencer laughs.

**2\. The Lesson**

  
In all honesty, Patrick's actually pretty surprised when he shows up on Spencer's doorstep, at his house on the outskirts of Vegas, miles away from the glitz of the Strip, yes, but still influenced by it. The house to Spencer's right has stained glass windows lining the living room, after all, stretching from floor to ceiling, staining the grass outside blue and red and yellow. The house to Spencer's left has a fucking village of garden gnomes climbing over the landscaped rocks, and the one across the street has two artistically placed pink flamingos by their, er, waterfall.

Patrick's sort of glad that Pete's not here to see this; he'd probably take this mish-mash of styles as a sign of Things To Come and there's _nothing_ Pete likes more than being at the forefront of, well, anything.

Spencer's house, though, is comparatively normal. White paint and blue trim and a cactus garden out front, with polished marble stones leading up to the stoop.

Okay, yeah, when Patrick pushes the doorbell, instead of bells or some electronic version of 'A Whole New World', there's a rat-tat-tat of a drum line that sounds suspiciously like the one from the Nothing Rhymes With Circus Tour, but.

But Patrick has a closet in his bedroom just for hats, and Pete has a room just for DecayDance's gold and platinum records, spotlights pointed at each and every one of them. They're all entitled to their extravagances, Patrick thinks.

So he rings the bell and then he rocks back on his heels, shoving his hands into his pockets, fingers curled into the denim. And he waits. And waits. Maybe, he thinks, Spencer's out, even though there's a BMW parked in the driveway, but then he hears footsteps coming: stairs, hallway, closer. A moment later, the lock on the door is turning and Spencer's standing there and suddenly Patrick's not sure whether he's more surprised to actually be there, or whether Spencer's more surprised to see him.

Patrick runs a finger over the bill of his cap, smiles and says, "So, hey. I was, you know, in the neighborhood--well, in Vegas anyway--and you said to--" Stop by, but of course that had been two months ago and Patrick hasn't talked to Spencer in that time at all. The only Panic member he talks to regularly is Ryan, because Ryan knows talent when he hears it, and Patrick is one of the best at getting the talent actually heard.

Spencer's nodding, though, smiling widely, and he's stepping back into the foyer, motioning Patrick in.

"Yeah, yeah, of course," Spencer says. "I was just, uh, finishing up."

He motions at the staircase, and funny thing: even though the doorbell is completely silent, Patrick can still hear drumming. It's pretty quiet, muffled because Spencer has obviously invested in pretty awesome soundproofing--Patrick hadn't heard anything outside--and Patrick says, "Oh, shit. Sorry. I should have called. I can--" He starts back towards the door, but Spencer just rolls his eyes, looking a little playfully huffy in that Spencer Smith way of his, as he says, "Seriously, it's fine. We're honestly about done. Come on up."

He starts up the stairs before Patrick can protest, and so Patrick follows him, because really, he has no other choice. The drumbeats get louder as Spencer heads for the one mostly open door, and when he goes in, Patrick sees a kid sitting behind a kit. Red-haired and freckles and Patrick knows he's seen him in _Spin_ or _AP_, he doesn't remember the kid's name, his band.

The kid knows Patrick, though, because one moment he's pounding away and the next he's faltering, trailing off in a stuttering beat. When Patrick glances over at Spencer, he sees him rolling his eyes again, opening his mouth and saying, "Patrick, this is Kevin. He's in the Aqua Angels." And yes, yes, of course, Patrick remembers him now. "Kevin, you seem to recognize Patrick."

Kevin is gathering himself pretty well, Patrick thinks. He's standing up from the kit anyway, moving around it so that he can extend his hand in Patrick's direction. As Patrick reaches out to shake it, though, Kevin pulls it back to wipe it on his shirt, then plunges it back out again, blushing.

"Hey, yeah," Kevin says. "Yeah, hi." He's grinning, a little nervously. "So I should probably. I mean, you guys-- I mean, we're about--"

"Sit." It's almost a bark, something Spencer's good at, Patrick knows, and Kevin twitches at the sound. When Spencer flicks his hand in the direction of the kit, though, and says, "Start back up where we were. Show Patrick that sequence we've been working on," Kevin nods hesitantly and goes.

Spencer moves to the second kit in the room, perching on the stool and picking up his sticks. Patrick leans back against the wall and watches as Spencer counts out the rhythm and Kevin starts in. The kid glances at Patrick once, twice, a few times over the first few rolls, but then the tempo picks up and Kevin's arms are rising above his head, coming down harder, crossing, moving more quickly, beat-beat-beat-thump, feet working the peddles. His hair flops down into his eyes, brushes at his nose, but when Kevin tosses his head, it's only to the beat of his drums.

He's still playing when Patrick sees Spencer counting his way into the beat, and the next thing Patrick knows, they're both playing and they're watching each other, and maybe there are routines they've worked out because they're playing in fucking unison, a cacophony of noise, one or the other adding little free-style nuances every few stanzas, but always in sync, always in tempo. They end with a flourish of pounding, their whole bodies bending into the beats.

They're both breathing heavily in the sudden silence, and Patrick claps a few times, grinning at the sudden redness staining Kevin's cheeks. Spencer just starts counting out another beat with his sticks again, though, raising one of his eyebrows in Kevin's direction, and Kevin takes another look at Patrick, but nods. Patrick expects them to start in on another joint venture, but instead its just Spencer. He starts out simply, and even as he breaks off, Kevin's playing, echoing Spencer beat for beat, move for move.

The moment he finishes, Spencer picks it right back up again, upping the difficulty, the intensity. Again Kevin plays it back and they go on like this, lobbing the challenge between them as Patrick watches, back and forth and back again until their sticks are blurring in the air--

\--and then Kevin falters, a missed beat, and he realizes it even before Patrick and Spencer do, if his anticipatory wince is any clue.

He's laughing, though, and Spencer is joining in, looking proud. Before Spencer can claim his victory, though, Patrick holds out his hands for Kevin's sticks, and Kevin gets it, stands, ceding his seat. Patrick is already loosening his wrists, twisting them. He sits down and goes into his warm up, a few rolls, a rhythm learned long ago, and he's out of practice, yeah, but.

But the beat is pounding in his blood in ways he hasn't let it for a while. There's a difference between playing by oneself in the studio, after all, and playing with others. For fun, that is, not with one of the groups he's producing, showing them how doing it this way would sound better, trust me, no please, just fucking trust me.

So after a moment, he looks at Spencer, raises his eyebrow and Spencer's eyes are narrowed and he's biting at his bottom lip. He starts in exactly where he'd left off with Kevin and when he cuts off, Patrick picks up the beat. He closes his eyes, seeing the music like flashes of color behind his eyelids. When he finishes, Spencer starts in again immediately and Patrick opens his eyes, watching as Spencer's whole body moves with the force of his playing. Back and forth like this a few times, until Patrick decides to push the game further, continuing Spencer's beat into one of his own creation, and when he looks over, Spencer's grinning, rather wickedly, in Patrick's opinion. He echoes Patrick, though, then pushes it even father, and they volley it back and forth like that until the moment Patrick can hear a beat complimentary to Spencer's in his head and he finds himself chiming in, changing the game again. After a moment, Spencer smiles at him and launches into a roll that highlights Patrick's heavier beats, and maybe it would sound like just a whole hell of a lot of noise to anyone outside the room, but Patrick can feel the rhythm, matched between them, real and there and clicking and when Patrick looks over at Kevin, he sees the kid looking between them, an almost awed look on his face.

Patrick looks back at Spencer and thinks, yeah.


	2. Snapshots From a Possible Future

3\. The Lunch

  
Patrick and Ryan generally try to meet for lunch once every few months, maybe more often, at a bistro in LA.

It's a little place, a hole in the wall down near the financial district. Patrick usually gets a salad--something with more tomatoes and cheese than lettuce--and Ryan gets the soup, always, even today, no matter that it's July, no matter that it's fucking ninety out and Patrick pretty much felt like he was stepping into an oven when he left the air conditioned safety of the studio earlier. Ryan doesn't seem to care; he just raises the spoon to his lips, blows the steam in Patrick's direction, and matches Patrick's raised eyebrow with one of his own.

In response, Patrick just bites into one of the tomatoes, feels cool juice squirt across his tongue, savors it. Patrick sees Ryan roll his eyes, then reach for his glass of water, and it's then that he sees the ink staining Ryan's fingers, black smudges bleeding to gray.

"So what are you writing?" Patrick asks after he swallows. He watches as Ryan looks down at his fingers with something that might be betrayal, but then he smiles, just a little.

"I was just, you know, playing," he says. "I had some words--"

Patrick knows; half a lifetime of Pete and he knows about words, the ones that stick in your head, burning a path between your brain and your fingers before spilling out, staining the page. Eight years later and Patrick still gets emails from Pete filled with those words--sometimes just a line, sometimes a paragraph. Some nights, even, he still finds himself taking them, rearranging them, doodling out little tunes. Sometimes he'll put something together on the computer, just like the old days, and send it back Pete's way.

Those nights, usually, Pete will call, and he'll listen to Patrick work, play with beats, and he'll talk--make suggestions or update Patrick on the latest DecayDance gossip--or maybe he'll hardly say anything at all, just, "Yeah, yeah, man. Sounds good," or, "That fucking rocks, dude," or, "Fuck, Patrick, just--" and when he says things like that, Patrick finds himself saying, "Yeah," knowing neither of them are talking about the song.

"I know," Patrick says to Ryan. "Are they for--?"

Ryan? Brendon? One of Ryan's bands?

Ryan shrugs, though, running his fingers under the neck of his t-shirt. "I was just--" he says and Patrick nods.

Ten years ago, Patrick never would have pictured himself here, having lunch with Ryan on a regular basis--not more often than Pete and Ryan had lunch together, anyway. Or Ryan and Spencer, or Ryan and Brendon. They are the only two of the DecayDance crew to spend more than half the year in LA, though, and Patrick looks forward to these lunches because Ryan is one of the best at keeping on top of the local music scene. In LA and San Francisco. In Chicago, with Jon's help. In Portland and Denver and fucking Tulsa. He travels, he hears, he picks up demos and takes people out for coffee and sometimes he asks Patrick's opinion. Mostly a question of 'do you hear it, too?'

Today there're three jewel cases sitting on the table between them, Memorex discs, band names scratched in permanent marker across the white surface. At the end of the lunch, while they're working through their desserts--sorbet for Ryan, cookie for Patrick--Ryan will give him details. 'This hook,' he'll say, or 'this drummer,' or 'they aren't there yet, but I feel like there's something...' and Patrick will listen to them that night, the next. He'll lie on his bed and close his eyes and remember standing at the sides of stages all around the world, watching openers, local bands desperate for their big breaks.

He'll remember the thrill of hearing something new, raw and under-produced, but still good, exciting in ways he doesn't often hear any longer with the groups he works with now.

He wonders if there's anything like that in this stack of CDs and suddenly his fingers itch to sort through them. To take in names, song titles, get the first impression out of the way.

Ryan likes his routine, though, and it's not like they don't have other things to talk about. What's new with Ryan's growing stable of artists, what's new with Pete. Who Patrick's working with in the studio these days. How Joe ended up on the cover of Guitar Player for the fifth time last week, posing with the latest in the family of Trohman guitars. Andy, Brendon—

"Spence said you dropped in on his lesson with the Aqua Angel kid a few weeks ago," Ryan says after another minute, when Patrick's worked his way through most of the tomatoes on his plate. "Says you sat down and played. That you actually gave him a run for his money." His face was passive, but he sounded vaguely impressed--for Ryan Ross, anyway.

"I--" Patrick says, starting to push his lettuce around his plate. "I held my own. For a while. If Spencer had really wanted to, you know, fucking bury me with something fancy, he could have."

Ryan just shrugs again. "I don't know about that," he says. "It's not often he gets much of a challenge anymore. He--"

He might have said more, but their waitress comes over then, asking if they're ready for dessert. Ryan nods, as he always does, and when she's gone, he stares at Patrick for a moment longer, looks as if he's about to say something that Patrick maybe doesn't want to hear--although what that would be, Patrick has no idea--then seems to make a decision, picking up the first CD up off the stack between them.

"These kids," he says, sounding more animated than he has all day. "There are six of them, because apparently they couldn't bear to leave any member of their little high school clique behind." He rolls his eyes at that. "So I thought, you know. Singer, drummer, three guitar players, and maybe a keyboard player. That sounds logical, right? But you would be wrong. Because there is a piano, but only two guitars, and get this: the sixth kid? Plays the ukulele. And not only does he play the ukulele, they give him a _solo_—" Ryan says more, always says more, but Patrick stops listening, takes the CD from Ryan and rubs his thumb over a smudge on the plastic case.

He wonders if this will be new. If it will be good. Exciting.

And when Ryan says, "So, do you think you'd have time to give it a listen?" Patrick nods, smiles as he says, "Sure, of course. Yeah."

Because yeah. Of course.

****

4\. The Bar

  
The last day of August in Chicago, and the air outside is stickier than Patrick remembers, stifling after a summer spent mostly in LA, where it's hot, yes, but the ocean's only a few minutes away. The inside of the bar is cold, though, the air conditioning going full-blast, and Patrick's pretty much wishing he hadn't left his jacket hanging in Pete's closet.

He knows he won't need it later, when the place actually fills up, but right now there's only six of them in a room meant to hold not a lot, but more than that—Jon and Tom, of course, and Cassie and Caitlyn and Pete and Patrick, who's only here early because he's sleeping in Pete's guest room—and Patrick's pretty fucking cold.

Also: glittery, because someone—and Patrick had thought that Jon and Cassie had more sense than this—had let Caitlyn accompany Pete (or possibly it was the other way around) when they'd gone shopping for decorations.

There are streamers stretched across the bar and mylar balloons floating above the raised platform of the stage at the front of the room, tied to drums and guitars, and twenty minutes until the doors officially open, Patrick's laying out noisemakers in the middle of the tables, then artistically dribbling gold confetti over the arrangements.

He asks, "They do know that August 31st isn't an actual holiday, right? I mean, I didn't miss the memo declaring it the new New Year's Eve?"

Pete laughs.

"You didn't miss the memo," he says, "but you know it totally should be. Except for the fact that September 1st Eve just doesn't have the same ring to it." He shakes his head sadly, as if this is a true tragedy. "I bet if we came up with a catchy name, though, we could market it. Work out a distribution deal with Hallmark? I mean, they're always looking for new holidays, right?"

Patrick rolls his eyes and knows that for the next week, at least, he's going to be finding emails in his inbox with potential (and increasingly wacky) names for the new August 31st holiday.

He's saved from answering, though, by the door to the bar opening, letting in a gust of thankfully warm air. And Brendon and Spencer.

Eight people become ten when Ryan and Keltie arrive, and by the time the party's officially been under way for twenty minutes, most everyone on Jon's guest list has arrived: some of the DecayDance crew, whom Patrick had seen at Pete's party at the beginning of the summer, others from the old days of the Chicago scene and from tours over a decade ago.

It's not a lot of people, thirty or forty, most of whom Patrick recognizes, and it feels comfortable in a way that most parties he goes to these days don't. That might possibly be because Pete, for once, actually seems to be content to spend the night sitting with Patrick, letting the party come to them. Or maybe it's because the only photographer around is Tom, carefully setting up his shots, making sure to get the best possible angles.

Two hours in, the music dims, and Jon climbs on top of the unofficially designated Panic table. Patrick watches as Brendon and Spencer and Ryan and Keltie all tip their heads back to look up at him, and Cassie's standing up, too, her hand at Jon's waist, giving him a bit of extra balance, maybe, as he's got a pint glass in his hand.

"So," Jon says, "We want to thank you all for coming tonight. Cassie, Tom and I have been working on this, god, for months now—you all know we have—and it really means a lot to us that you'd all come out tonight to help celebrate our almost opening. So thank you, and we hope you're having as awesome a time as we are, and, you know, drink up! Because there's plenty more where this came from!" He raises his own glass then, downing his drink.

At that, there are cheers, clapping, and Jon looks a little red as he steps down from the table, balancing himself on Cassie's shoulder at first, then jumping down and wrapping his arms around her before dipping her into a kiss. There are catcalls then, mostly from the rest of the Panic boys, but Patrick can hear the shrill whistle of Pete's voice in his ear, too.

Another two hours and the place is starting to clear out, until it's just the original ten plus Bill and Nick and Siska and a few of Jon's other close friends. The room is dim, late night quiet, and Patrick's pretty much been eavesdropping on Pete's conversation with Bill Beckett for the last half hour, watching as Brendon carefully undoes all of Ryan's work cleaning up the confetti.

It's then that he hears the metallic sound of a fingernail running over a cymbal.

He looks over to see Spencer standing on the raised platform of the stage, eyeing the drum kit, running the pad of his finger over the edge of the snare, then down the cymbal again.

Spencer looks over then and catches Patrick watching. He raises an eyebrow, part invitation, part challenge, and Patrick…

Patrick's never one to turn down a challenge, not when it's as late as it is, his blood warm and thick from laughter and alcohol. He stands up, the flimsy bar chair scraping across the floor beneath him. He sees Pete glance at him, can hear the unspoken question, 'where are we going?' He doesn't answer, though, just walks up to the platform and picks up one of the guitars, unhooking the balloons and letting them float to the ceiling.

As Patrick pulls the strap over his shoulder, Spencer smiles, then makes his way around to the back of the drum kit, picking up the sticks. There are stools on the stage, as if Jon planned this—and maybe he did, Patrick thinks, leaving instruments out in a room full of musicians. He sits for a few minutes, fingers moving over the strings of the guitar, then reaching up the neck to tighten the machine heads. He's paying enough attention to that that he barely notices Pete climbing up onto the stage, too, to grab one of the other guitars. Then Brendon's there, grabbing another, and they're both tuning, too, a clash of notes.

"So what are we playing?" Brendon asks as he strums a chord, and it's then that Patrick notices the rest of the people in the room—all fourteen of them—are watching them. He finds himself looking at Pete, sees Pete raise one of his eyebrows in a silent question, then not so silent as he says, "What do you say, man? Shall we go back to our early days? How well do you little dudes remember our early shit?"

By way of answer, Spencer starts tapping out the intro beat to 'Sugar' and this time, Patrick knows that his raised eyebrow is a challenge. Especially since it's paired with a self-satisfied smirk.

"Yeah," Spencer says, "you weren't best friends with Ryan Ross during his formative Fall Out Boy fan boy days."

"_Our_," Patrick hears Ryan say from somewhere to his right. "_Our_ fan boy days. Don't you dare pretend I was the only one singing along to the car radio, Spencer Smith, I know where you're sleeping tonight."

Spencer ignores him, though. "I could probably still do your early shit in my sleep."

"Just like I still wake up humming 'I Write Sins,'" Pete says, grinning widely, "and wonder what the hell I was thinking, unleashing that on the world." He's already picking out that long familiar bass line and he laughs when Spencer stops playing for a few seconds to flip him off.

Patrick nods at Spencer, then at Pete, who silences his guitar in preparation, and watches as Spencer counts out the beat with his sticks before launching into the first stanza of 'Sugar, We're Going Down' on the drums. Then, for the first time in, well, a long time, Patrick's joining in, Pete right there with him.

It takes Brendon a few stanzas to get the chords down, remember how the song goes, but then he's _there_, and Spencer and Brendon aren't Joe and Andy, but it still works. Well enough, even, that Patrick finds himself stepping up to the mic, which isn't even on, to start singing.

Behind him, he can feel Pete getting into the music, feels him moving into Patrick's space, so he isn't surprised to feel Pete's forehead coming down on his shoulder, resting there for a moment, still playing, before Pete makes way over to Brendon's side of the stage. Patrick turns to watch as Pete crowds in close, playing from the hips in that way he has, before stepping back again, almost taunting Brendon into following him back across the stage. Which he does. They play at each other for long stanzas before Pete takes an even larger step back and starts spinning, so familiar, and suddenly it's like Brendon's channeling Joe, jumping and turning in circles and head banging, too.

It's not perfect, in no way is it perfect, as Pete misses a chord, then Brendon plays a section in an entirely wrong key, and Patrick forgets a few words in the middle of the third verse, but no one in the room seems to care. Not with the way they're laughing, singing along.

When Patrick happens to glance at Spencer at the end of the song, Spencer nods, then tilts his head slightly, an unspoken question.

Patrick nods in return.

  
****

5\. The Visitor (I)

  
There are things that Patrick expects to see when he walks into his studio sound booth: namely, his mixing board. Possibly a recording tech, making a copy of a master tape. Frank Iero straddling one of his chairs--and also, because he's Frank Iero, spinning in circles—is not one of them. Especially since the last Patrick heard, Frank and Jamia were still in New Jersey.

As soon as he sees Patrick standing in the doorway, Frank reaches out to stop himself, fingers curling around the edge of the mixing board on his next pass, but thankfully not brushing up against any of the knobs or changing any settings, because then Patrick might have to yell at him on general principle.

Patrick would hate for the first words he says to Frank in—God, he's not even sure how long—to be shouted.

Especially when Frank is grinning at him like that.

Frank pushes his hair—still black and wavy—behind his ears, then starts to stand, getting about halfway up before he decides to just lean forward instead, clasping Patrick's, well, wrist, as he overshoots his grip just a little. Frank still squeezes, though, tattooed fingers tight around Patrick's skin, and he uses the hold to pull Patrick into a pretty awkward hug, bent as they are over the chair.

Then Frank lets go, sits back down, and, his smile still spreading his lips wide, says, "Hi."

"Hi," Patrick says, grinning back. Then, "God, what the hell are you doing here, Iero?"

He makes his way to the other chair (his chair) and sits. His hands automatically go to the knobs on the board and he twists one, then another, even though there's nothing cued up to work on. He finished his morning session half an hour ago, a solo artist working on her third album, and he still has another hour before his afternoon appointment: a new group coming in to start talking about their 'vision.'

They have talent; Patrick wouldn't be working with them otherwise. They're still young, though, with a lot to learn, and honestly, Patrick's not entirely sure they've realized that yet.

"So I was in the neighborhood," Frank says, and Patrick remembers saying the same thing to Spencer just a few months ago.

"'Happened to be in California' in the neighborhood?" Patrick asks. "And let me guess, when Pete heard you were going to be out here, he told Mikey to tell you to come check up on me? Because Pete seems to think that I spend too much time in the studio. Which is not new. I keep telling him he should be used to it by now, but—"

"Yeah, no," Frank says, laughing. "More like 'escaping from inventory hell' in the neighborhood."

Patrick frowns now, confused. Frank continues almost immediately, though.

"Jamia and I, we've got a little boutique down in Riverside now. Little being the operative word, you know?" Frank sketches his fingers through the air to illustrate exactly how little 'little' apparently is.

And now that he thinks about it, Patrick's pretty sure he does remember Pete maybe talking about Mikey saying Frank was heading out Patrick's direction sometime maybe, but at the time, Frank's destination had been more of a 'west coast, I don't know,' sort of place.

"Yeah," he says, "we're going to see if we can conquer this coast, too." He shakes his head, curls slipping out from behind his ears. "Before we can do that, though, we have to conquer the boxes, and after three days of doing battle with those, and painting walls, and hanging shelves, I was about to go batshit insane. Or paint myself blue. So Jamia kicked me out and here I am."

He pauses.

"And okay, yes, Pete told Mikey to tell me to drop in if I was ever in the neighborhood, to make sure you weren't working too hard. That Pete would fly out himself to kick my ass if I didn't."

"And I'm sure Pete's interpretation of 'neighborhood' was defined as being anywhere from Seattle to Baja, right?" Patrick asks and Frank nods, saying, "Yeah, right, exactly."

His smile is fonder now than it was before, but whether it's the talk of Pete and Mikey and their utter predictability, or the talk of his wife and their shop, Patrick doesn't know.

What he does know is this: he's having a sudden flashback to Warped, God, twelve years ago, where it was Fall Out Boy and My Chem and a hundred other bands that came and went. Where Mikey and Pete went back and forth between their busses, dragging various members of both bands with them, until Patrick was as comfortable on the My Chemical Romance bus as he was on his own.

Patrick was used to Frank then: the body that would come flying seemingly out of nowhere to land on Patrick's back, the bouncing off the wall energy that _never stopped_. The loud laughter, the bright and infectious smile.

Twelve years later, though, Patrick's pretty sure it's still the same Frank. Especially given the way his knee's bouncing up and down right now, heel tapping a rhythm out on the tiled floor.

"So I'm here," Frank says. "I know you're a busy, busy man, so I should probably get going, especially since I'm feeling less inclined to commit murder by hoodie. But I just wanted to let you know I was in town, and say that when you have time, we should get together. Have dinner."

Patrick nods, because that would be good. "Yeah, we should."

"Great!" Frank says, standing up and walking across the booth to give Patrick a real hug, a squeeze and a pat on the shoulder. When he pulls back and heads toward the door, he says, "Definitely soon. Maybe next week after the shop is set up. We could give you the tour of the… whole two rooms." Wide grin. "Maybe next Thursday?"

Patrick nods again, saying, "I'll pencil you in."

Frank winks at him then. "Oh, we're doing it, Stump. Put it in ink."

Patrick does.


	3. Snapshots From a Possible Future [Parts 6-8]

6\. The Show

  
The first Patrick knows of the plan to kidnap him, he hears the door to the sound booth opening, then Ryan Ross saying, "See, I told you he'd still fucking be here."

Patrick's spinning in his chair even as Ryan speaks, so he sees the grin that Spencer gives the other man as he asks, "Did I say I didn't believe you? I never said I didn't believe you." He turns his attention towards Patrick then, his grin, impossibly, widening even more. "Hi," he says, "we're here to kidnap you," and as Patrick asks, "Oh, really?" Spencer continues, "If you have time, that is. If we aren't, like, derailing some group's next number one hit."

Patrick stares at them for a moment, thinking, unsure of what to say.

He could say yes, they were interrupting, because he's got three different songs queued up on the board right now—maybe not number one hit singles, but something. He's got prep work to do before the new group, Last Bastion of Sanity, comes into the studio on Monday: ideas to prepare, studio musicians to schedule, figuring out what instruments are needed what day.

Ryan's watching him like Pete does, though, like he knows what excuses are trying to form in Patrick's head, and he says, "One of Spencer's protégés is playing a show tonight at The Gateway, so of course he decided he needs backup so that he doesn't have to face the mass of screaming teenage girls by himself. Because he's a wimpfff—"

Spencer claps a hand over Ryan's mouth as he says, "The Aqua Angels are playing—" He turns to look at Ryan halfway through the sentence, making a face before pulling his hand away and wiping it on his jeans. Ryan just grins serenely as Spencer turns his attention back to Patrick and says, "—and I thought you might be interested in seeing them since, you know, you sat in on Kevin's lesson that one time."

He looks hopeful, but understanding, too, and Patrick can still say no, knows that if he does, Spencer and Ryan will leave and he'll have the rest of the evening to himself, as he'd planned. He probably should say no, he thinks, because he's already got plans to leave early to go down to Frank's next Thursday and demos he's promised to get to people sooner rather than later, preferably before he starts in with Last Bastion, but—

—but it's not like his social life is so packed that he won't have tomorrow night, Saturday, Sunday, to get the work done.

Besides, he thinks, a night out would probably do him some good. He can almost hear Pete's voice in his head saying, 'All work and no play makes Patrick a dull little fuck,' and as he smiles at that thought, he says, "Yeah, no. That'd be, yeah. Let me just, you know, save things here and then I'll be ready to—"

Ryan nods, looking satisfied, like Patrick's made the only acceptable choice, as far as he's concerned, but Spencer, he practically fucking beams.

*

They take Ryan's car, Spencer sitting shotgun, and the drive only takes about half an hour. It's late enough that Patrick knows the opener must already be at least halfway through their set, but when they drive by the venue there's still a crowd of people hanging around out front, there are still minivans pulled up outside, parents dropping teenagers off.

"There's a reason Spence wanted the backup," Ryan says to Patrick as they turn a corner, seeming to know what Patrick's thinking—namely, that he's suddenly feeling really fucking old. Fucking _minivans_. "You'd also think I'd know better, after last time—"

"Last time was not that bad," Spencer protests.

"—when he dragged me all the way down to fucking San Diego, to the _beach_, where there was _sand_, Stump, and a crowd of kids who looked like they'd left their surf boards outside—"

"They're a surfer punk band," Spencer says. "What did you expect?"

"Sand, Spencer. In my _shoes_," Ryan says, and he's suddenly laughing in a way that Patrick's rarely seen him laugh before—not around people who aren't in his band anyway.

"And you call me a wimp." Spencer shakes his head, and then Ryan's pulling the car into a space around behind the venue and they're all getting out. The night air is still warm and a little sticky, the mid-September heat wave hasn't yet faded away, and Patrick pushes the sleeves of his sweatshirt up to his elbows as they walk towards the front door.

In the time it took them to park, a good portion of the kids have gone inside, but there are still some huddled by the corner, smoking their last cigarette before heading through the doors. Patrick keeps his head down, his hat pulled low over his face, but it's not like he expects any of the kids to recognize him—they mostly don't nowadays—and Spencer and Ryan don't seem to be worrying about it either.

Then Spencer's stepping up to the door and saying, "Spencer Smith. We're on the list."

The ticket man, a big burly guy with tattoos winding around his arms, looks as if he wants to smirk—Patrick in his trucker's hat, Spencer in his sweatshirt, Ryan in his sunglasses even though the sun is pretty much gone by now, compared to all the kids hanging around in barely-there shirts and tight jeans and board shorts—but when he spots Spencer's name on the list, he nods, looking a little relieved that he hadn't laughed in their faces.

They step through the double doors into the gold paint-trimmed lobby, green and purple carpet, dark wood banisters leading up to the balcony seats above, and Patrick wonders if they're going to head backstage. They don't, though, Ryan leading them towards the bar, Spencer grabbing them a table off to the side, where the view is sort of impeded by the mass of bodies crowded around the stage, but there's also room to breathe, which Patrick prefers.

There's still a band on stage—"Westminster Heights," Ryan says, leaning over to speak in Patrick's ear as they get their drinks from the bartender. "I heard their demo about six months ago and thought they sounded pretty generic."—and there's a bit of singing along, but mostly there's milling. It's apparently their finale, though, because with a clash of cymbals they're bowing, saying their thank you's, and leaving the stage.

The lights in the room edge upwards, enough so that Patrick can actually see Spencer sitting at their table as they head in his direction. The intermission is only about fifteen minutes long, though, and then the lights are dimming again, and this time, when the spotlight moves to the stage again, the crowd screams.

Patrick recognizes the kids in the band—after meeting Kevin, he'd looked them up online, listened to a few of their songs—and even though the venue's not sold out, he's pretty sure he can understand why AP listed them as one of their 'Bands To Watch'. The lead singer's got presence in the way that Pete had presence, engaging the audience, talking to them, giving them every opportunity to sing along, scream their approval. They've got a few catchy hooks, too, dance-y numbers—better than their attempts at ballads by a long shot—and Patrick can see Spencer's head bobbing in time with the beat of the drums. Spencer's eyes are pretty much shining, and he looks pretty fucking proud, and Patrick can see why Ryan referred to Kevin as Spencer's protégé earlier.

It's a good show, and by the end of it Patrick's smiling too. It's not often he stays out on the floor for shows nowadays—usually, he's the guest of someone from some label, hanging around backstage and watching from the wings—and it makes for a completely different atmosphere. The heat and sweat and the crowd jumping when the lead singer says jump; just general enthusiasm. When the end finally comes, encore complete, Spencer's standing, clapping with the best of them, adding his voice to the screams of the girls in the crowd, and after a moment, Patrick does, too. Ryan rolls his eyes at them, Patrick sees, but he's also grinning.

After, when the lights have been turned up and the floor is starting to empty—although there are clusters of girls hanging around still, probably hoping that if they wait long enough the band will grace them with their presence—that's when Spencer leads them towards the doors that lead to the backstage area.

There's another guard there, but he seems to recognize Spencer, lets them head on back, and it's only a matter of minutes before they're at the band room, a piece of paper with 'Aqua Angels' scribbled on it taped to a door.

Spencer knocks but doesn't wait for the all clear before turning the handle. Patrick's close enough beside him to see the lead singer turning towards them, ready to bitch out whomever it is that's interrupting them, before he recognizes Spencer. His eyes widen when he sees Ryan and, yes, Patrick, and it's that moment's pause that allows Kevin to reach them first.

"—'s awesome," Kevin is saying to Spencer, before turning to Patrick, blushing a little again. "Good to see you again, man," he says, holding out his hand, this time not bothering to wipe the sweat away. Impossible, Patrick knows, after a show. At which point he turns to the rest of the band and says, "You all know Patrick Stump and Ryan Ross, right?"

The lead singer—Aiden, Patrick later learns—nods, saying, "Fuck yeah, of course, dude." He's bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, practically vibrating, and it only increases when Patrick says, "You guys put on a hell of a show."

Grins all around at that, and one of the guitar players—Patrick thinks lead—maybe sort of whoops, and if he closes his eyes, he can sort of imagine that it's Pete bouncing in front of him, Joe shouting in the corner, Andy standing beside him, fingers tapping out the beat of their last song on his thigh, saying, yeah, yeah, like this.

Yeah.

Like this.

Patrick remembers.  


  
****

7\. The Dinner

  
On Thursday, Patrick leaves the studio at four.

Amanda, one of his recording engineers, raises an eyebrow as he pushes his chair away from the computer, as he wraps the cord around his headphones and puts them off to the side, but he just says, "Yeah, I'm meeting some friends for dinner tonight, and I'd sort of like to get there before, you know, midnight."

She nods, smirking, glancing in the direction of the street, despite the fact that there are at least four rooms between the sound booth and the parking lot outside. "Good luck with that," she says, already turning back to her own computer, and Patrick says, "Thanks. I'm pretty sure I'm going to need it."

When he talked to Frank earlier in the week, Frank said, "So, sometime between 6:30 and seven o'clock? It should take you, what, an hour twenty, an hour and a half to get over here, right? That should give us plenty of time, yeah?"

Patrick's pretty sure it's going to take him longer than an hour and a half to get to Riverside, though, what with rush hour starting sometime around two, traffic's tendency to move at about the speed of molasses, and the fact that he's seen Frank Iero drive before and, if memory serves, it pretty much illustrates the phrase 'bat out of hell'.

He's prepared, though. He has two CDs that Ryan sent his way, special delivery from Texas, another from Pete—a mix of upcoming DecayDance attractions—and a few demos that managers have dropped off at the studio, hoping to entice him into working with their clients.

He starts with those, hears something he might like to work with in the first, pretty much nothing he likes in the second, and only gets two songs into the third before he realizes he's going to have to listen to it someplace outside of the car, when he's not stuck in traffic, listening to the country music blaring from the BMW on one side of him, the classical coming from the Honda on the other.

Pete's CD is next, then the first of Ryan's, and he's halfway through the second by the time he sees the Riverside exit. Frank's directions are good: straight forward, leading him towards the university, then down a few blocks away from it. He sees coffee places and sandwich shops with neon signs in their windows, and there, right smack dab in the middle of the block, is The Ragged Nest.

The sign in the window reads 'Coming soon!' and already there are mannequins in the windows draped with some of their stock: a skeleton hoodie on one, Jamia's signature item; skirts and blouses in blacks and maroons with silver and gold highlights on another.

Inside he sees people working: Jamia and a girl Patrick doesn't know, her hair in bright blue braids. He doesn't see Frank, and he pauses a moment, looking for him, before he knocks on the window.

The unknown girl looks up first, an almost annoyed expression on her face, something along the lines of: come back later, dude. Can't you see the sign says 'coming soon'? Jamia grins widely, though, when she spots him, stepping away from the rack she's putting together, and wiping her hands on her shorts as she makes her way to the door. She flips the deadbolt, opens the door, then holds out her arms for a hug.

"Patrick!" she says. "You're earlier than I expected! Was traffic awful? I told Frank it would be awful, but he just said, 'Jai, I did it last week, it wasn't that bad', and I said, 'Frankie, I've seen the way you drive. People probably got out of your way to avoid being killed.'"

"And I said, 'fuck yeah, anything to get me there faster,' right, babe?" Frank asks, coming in through the doorway at the back of the room, a cardboard box in his arms. He sets it down on a table, then walks over towards where Jamia's standing, bumping his hip against hers and draping an arm over her shoulders.

Patrick hasn't spent much time around Jamia. He remembers her joining Frank on the Warped tour for a weekend or two, or maybe it was even a few weeks, and he's seen her at various parties through the years—a barbecue in Pete's backyard, something at MTV, a few other places—but it's been a long time.

"This is Karen," Frank says then, pointing to the blue-haired girl. "Jai knew her back in high school. She was lucky enough to win the chance to help us move in, given that it's her fault we're out here, since she was, you know, the one to put the idea in Jamia's head in the first place."

Karen shrugs, a 'what can I say?' sort of gesture, and Jamia grins back at her. Then she sweeps her arm out in front of her and says, "So welcome to the store. You're our first visitor, aside from the pizza delivery kid a few days ago. But he doesn't really count. He pretty much stood on the sidewalk, holding our pizza hostage until we gave him money."

"As they do," Karen says, even as Patrick's asking, "So I guess I should be feeling honored?"

Frank nods enthusiastically.

"Definitely honored, dude. I mean, it's not every day you get to see… this." He looks around the room, and it maybe starts out exaggerated, slightly self-deprecating, but Patrick can see the moment his gaze transforms into something proud.

Because this is _theirs_, Frank and Jamia's new venture, and. Yeah.

Yeah.

"And I believe you promised me a tour of _both_ rooms," Patrick says, "Not just this one."

"I did," Frank says, standing up just a little bit taller. His arm drops from Jamia's shoulder then, hand moving down to squeeze hers, and he says, "So this is the sales floor, obviously. We're working on sort of a gothic theme to counteract _that place_ across the street."

When Patrick looks in the direction that Frank is pointing, he sees windows covered in bright pink lettering, "Sale!" and "50% off!" and a picture of something that is maybe a smiley-faced daisy wearing sunglasses, he's not quite sure.

"Yeah," he says, turning back around. "Good plan."

Frank practically beams at him, before turning towards the wall to Patrick's right, gesturing at the glass shelves already mounted there.

And the shop may only be two rooms, but it still takes them half an hour to complete the tour, because Frank starts talking about what's going to go where, what their vision is, what sorts of merchandise they're brought out with them, what new ideas Jamia's been working on, and by the time he's done, Patrick can practically see it all.

"We're going to have a grand opening celebration in another two weeks," Frank says. "October 15. You should come, if you have the chance. Gee said he'd come down from Portland for it, and Mikey and Alicia promised to make the trip out from New York, and while Ray's not sure if he'll be able to make it or not, Bob said he could probably get someone to cover for him for a night, so. You know. It'll be like a reunion."

"Yeah," Patrick says. "It sounds like it. I'll have to check my, you know—"

"Of course," Jamia says. "We hope you'll be able to make it, though."

She pulls away from Frank then, because at some point during the tour, he hooked his hand around her waist, and says, "And you boys, I think, need to go get dinner." When Patrick opens his mouth to ask, 'you aren't coming, too?' she shakes her head and links her arm through Karen's, leaning her head on her friend's shoulder.

"We're going to have a girl's night in," she says. "Doing girly things and letting you boys talk about your music things in peace, without us saying 'who' and 'what' and 'could you please speak in English instead of music-ese?' every few sentences. It will be wonderful.'

And with that, Patrick finds himself being herded towards the front door, then outside.

They walk to the restaurant, a shitty looking little Mexican place just a few blocks away. Patrick stares at it for a moment before they go in, noticing that the tables out front have uneven legs and are flanked by cheap plastic chairs, that the awning up above is hanging crookedly over its frame.

"I know," Frank says, holding the door open for Patrick, the cheap bells hanging on the other side still jangling, and Patrick wishes he didn't know quite what Frank meant by that, but he's pretty sure he knows exactly what Frank means. This isn't LA, after all, where even the cheap restaurants are staffed by aspiring actors and are stalked by paparazzi waiting to catch this week's hot celebrity slumming it, preferably with mayonnaise on their chin.

"I was thinking the same thing," Frank continues, pushing the door open, "when Karen brought us here after we arrived, but she claimed that you haven't really lived until you've tried their guacamole, and— And I swear, Jamia and I have been back twice since. Which wouldn't be saying a whole lot, except that we've only been in the state for fifteen days."

Patrick nods as he looks around the inside of the restaurant.

The walls are covered in murals: famous faces from Mexican history, hillsides of crops, trees and flowers, all done in bright reds and golds and browns and greens. Nine of the twelve tables are full, and after a quick glance around the room, Frank leads the way to an open one by the window, giving them a perfect view of the cracked sidewalk outside.

It takes a few moments for a girl to bring over menus and bowls of chips and salsa and yes, the guacamole, which Frank digs into as Patrick takes a first look at the menu. "You know what you want?" he asks, and Frank nods.

"I've become a creature of habit in my old age," he says. "Besides: the cheese enchiladas? Also to die for."

When their waitress comes back over, she's smiling at Frank. "The usual?" she asks, like he's been coming here for years, not just two weeks, and Frank says, "You already know me too well."

"And I'll have the same," Patrick says, before she can ask him, and as she shakes her head fondly at them, he grabs a chip from the bowl and dips it into the guacamole, taking a bite. It's mostly smooth, slightly chunky, with a flavor that's, yeah, okay, pretty much to die for, and Patrick's finishing his chip and reaching back for seconds even as he's still chewing.

Frank laughs. "I told you, man," he says. "Riverside… it's got three claims to fame, as far as I can tell: the smog, the fact that it's hotter than the armpit of hell, and this restaurant."

"I'm starting to see that," Patrick says. "Although some people might say that the university should be considered a claim to fame, too."

Frank flaps his hand in front of him, as if batting the comment away. "Good university, good Mexican food. I, personally, believe that the good food is far more rare. And I should know, right? We both should."

And he's right: if anyone should know good food, it's musicians. Years spent in busses and in the backs of vans and Patrick's not even sure how many circuits of the country he's made during his career. He's eaten in good shitty little restaurants and shitty shitty little restaurants, where the cooks wouldn't have known the meaning of the word vegetarian (much less vegan) if bit them in the ass.

"Yeah, yeah," Patrick says, "exactly. If anyone should, we should."

Frank grins widely then, shaking his head slightly, and Patrick asks, "What?"

"I was just thinking. I'm surprised Pete hasn't thought to do something with that. Like, the road musician's guide to restaurants in the United States. He could probably make a fortune."

"He probably could," Patrick agrees, "but please don't mention it to him. He'd probably insist on doing most of the research himself, which would mean that he'd try to con me into going on a road trip with him, and just, yeah, no."

"What?" Frank asks. "No more living in the back of a bus for you, Stump? I'm surprised. I thought that once it was in your blood, it was always in your blood."

Patrick wants to say is 'It is.'

He says, "Yeah, well. You know."  


  


**8\. The Studio**

  
"Yeah, so," Patrick says into the seemingly sudden quiet, turning away from the window into the recording booth to look at Amanda. "Ha, fuck. Yeah, that could have gone better."

She nods.

"Yes, it could have," she says. She grins brightly after a moment, though. "But look on the bright side… If Last Bastion of Sanity ever decides to add a track to their album that consists of them screaming at each other, they won't even have to come back into the studio to do it again. I captured it all right here!" She gives the console a loving pat and Patrick can't help but laugh.

"Because that's what everyone wants to hear on an album," he says. "A chorus of 'Fuck you. No, actually, go fuck yourself, you fucking fuck.' Or however it went."

"Or however it went," she echoes, shaking her head almost fondly. She pushes her chair away from the computer. "Though it does have potential, don't you think? Maybe we could make it into a hidden track? Ooh, possibly a rap?"

"We could make it a Best Buy exclusive," Patrick says. "The 'Parental Guidance Only EP'? Available while supplies last?"

"I like the way you think, P. Stump." Amanda chuckles as she stands up, as she grabs her sweatshirt off the back of her chair before reaching over to pat Patrick on the top of his head, knocking his hat a little farther forward over his eyes. "Goodnight, Stump. Try to get out of here at a reasonable hour tonight, won't you?"

"Yeah, yeah," he says, batting her hand away, and then she's gone, shutting the door behind her.

He leans back in his chair after she's gone, pinching at his nose, hoping to relieve some of the pressure that built up behind his eyes during the session: the slow escalation of sniping into full-blown screaming, red faces and narrowed eyes, before Patrick finally told them go home already since they were wasting his time, their label's money, and they'd better have sorted their problems out before stepping through his door the next day, do you understand?

They went.

When Patrick looks back through the window into the recording studio, though, he sees that it isn't empty, not like he was expecting it to be. Adam, one of their studio musicians, one of the newer guys on the studio's speed-dial, is still sitting at his keyboard in the corner of the room, looking back at Patrick. His fingers are ghosting over keys, barely pressing down, a muted strain occasionally filtering through the speakers into Patrick's sound booth. He smiles a bit when Patrick raises an eyebrow in his direction, but it's wistful, too, a look Patrick is pretty sure he recognizes.

One Patrick's pretty sure he understands.

Patrick leans forward, pressing the button at the base of the microphone so that his voice will carry into the studio. "Listen," he says, "I'm going to be sticking around here for a bit, trying to get some of that—" He waves his hand around in the air, and Adam sort of smirks. "—out of my head. So you're, you know, welcome to stay and fuck around for awhile, too, if you want."

Adam blinks at him once, twice, then nods. He runs a hand through his tangled hair as he says, "Um, yeah. Okay, yeah."

Patrick nods, then turns the microphone off again, turns the speakers off, too, until the sound booth is silent around him. He pulls his headphones on, then reaches over to the computer next to him, opening up the track he wants. There's a spot thirty seconds in that needs _something_, but whether it's drums or more bass or, hell, a fucking kazoo, Patrick's not sure.

He listens to it once all the way through, then again, again, again, and then he turns his attention forward, and he blinks, because Adam isn't sitting in his corner any longer, playing the keyboard. He's made his way to the stool in the center of the room. He's perched on it, a bass balanced across his thighs and he's slowly picking out notes, his eyes closed.

Without truly realizing he's doing it, Patrick pulls his headphones off, presses the button to turn the speakers back on, and listens.

At first it just sounds like a mindless jumble of notes, but then it morphs into something Patrick does know—the bass line to the song Last Bastion was trying to record today. Adam's foot is tapping against the bottom rung of the stool and his head is bobbing to the rhythm of the music, and Patrick wonders if he's hearing the full song in his head now: the beat of the drums, the riffs of the lead guitar. The lead singer, you know, actually singing instead of screaming.

Patrick lets him play, watches him, and when the piece starts winding down, Patrick gets up from his chair, makes his way out into the hallway, and opens the door to the studio just about the time Adam finishes. Adam looks startled for a moment upon seeing Patrick, as if he forgot that Patrick was even there.

Maybe, Patrick thinks, he did.

"Sounds good," Patrick says, leaning against the doorjamb. "Better than fucking anything else that came out of here today, for sure."

"Yeah, right," Adam says, laughing a little, almost bitterly. "Yeah, that was something today. Reminded me a bit of my old band."

"And not in a good way, I'm assuming," Patrick says.

Adam looks like he wants to say more—looks like he has a lot more to say—but instead, after a moment, he just shrugs, then looks down at his guitar again, picking out more notes. "Not my concern now, though, is it?" He grins once, quickly, before his eyes slip closed again, face going a little lax.

Patrick wonders again what he's hearing in his head: if it's a song Patrick would know, one from his old band, one of his own composition, or if it's just notes strung together.

He stays, listening, for a few more long moments, then turns to leave. Before the door can swing shut, though, he steps back again, catching it with his foot. His shoe squeaks against the acoustic tile of the floor and Adam opens his eyes again, raising an eyebrow, then looking down at his watch, an almost guilty look on his face.

"Fuck, I'm sorry, you said a little while, you're probably ready to go. I'll just—" he starts, but Patrick says, "No, no. I was just. Wondering if you'd mind some company? It's been awhile since I sat down and—" He gestures at the instruments in the room, and Adam stares at him for a beat, two, before finally nodding. As Patrick watches, he settles back on his stool, running a finger over the strings of his guitar again.

It hasn't been that long, of course, Patrick thinks as he selects his guitar. A month ago he was sitting in Jon's bar, playing around with Pete and Spencer and Brendon, working their way through the back catalog of Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco songs, with some 80's Power Ballads thrown in for good measure. It feels like it's been longer than that, though, and Patrick wonders at that.

Six months ago, the only time he picked up a guitar or sat down at the drums was in the privacy of his own home, or when he needed to illustrate a point to one of the bands in the studio. Two visits with Spencer Smith, two with Frank Iero, and an impromptu jam session in Chicago, though, and playing for himself—and himself only—doesn't sound as appealing as it once did.

"What were you just playing?" Patrick asks. His fingers are already going to the machine heads, twisting them.

"Oh, just something from a while ago," Adam says. Then he smirks again, or possibly winces. "My band's one big hit. As in, we actually had a room of about four hundred kids singing along with us once. It was awesome."

"Yeah," Patrick says. "Yeah, that always is."

He can remember the first time kids sang along with his songs. It was in some youth center, fifty or sixty kids in the crowd—he could see them all, he remembers—and there were five or so kids in the first row actually mouthing along, lips forming the words before Patrick's could. That night, during a guitar interlude, he joined in Pete and Joe's spinning, and Pete slung an arm around him at the very end, pulling Patrick's head down to his shoulder as he said, "Like this, yeah? This, this is how it's supposed to be."

"We made a CD, a little six song EP," Adam continues, picking out that same string of notes again. "When we sold our hundredth copy we thought we were hot shit. We even went on tour for a summer, sure we were going to take over the world, you know? But, yeah. You know how it is. And here I am."

There are things for Patrick to say to that: 'here you are,' or 'yeah, I know.'

What he says is, "Show me how it goes?"


	4. Snapshots From A Possible Future [9-13]

9\. The Phone Call

  
Usually, Pete is the one to call. At least once a week, sometimes hitting the noon hour, with the excuse of making Patrick take a real break, or if he's in the mood to be fucking annoying, dialing Patrick at something like six in the morning, _after_ Pete has had his coffee, and saying, 'Ha! Did I wake you?'

Mostly he calls late at night, though, between eleven and one, LA time, because for the most part, Patrick's around, and if he is, he always answers.

This time, Patrick calls Pete.

Wednesday evening, and he's home before eight, and Patrick maybe had plans to watch TV for the evening, some crime procedural maybe, or if all else failed, the still-enduring after all these years _Law &amp; Order_ reruns, but he finds himself curling up on his couch, the latest issue of _People_ in his hand, Pete's name highlighted on his cell-phone screen.

Pete answers halfway through the second ring, almost crowing when he says, "What the fuck's up, man?"

Patrick starts to say, "Hello to you, too," but even as he does, Pete's saying, "Hey, hold on a sec, will you?" Then, more quietly, obviously speaking to other people in whatever room he's in: "Hey, dudes, I'm gonna take this. I'll catch you later, a'right?" Patrick hears hand-slapping, then Pete's chin scraping over the mouthpiece, and then Pete's back.

"Hi," he says, and it's suddenly quieter, as if he's shut a door. Maybe he has, Patrick thinks. Maybe he's still at the DecayDance offices, despite the fact that it's ten o'clock there.

This is the thing: Pete gives Patrick crap about staying at the studio for hours on end, but Patrick knows that Pete might very well put in longer hours than any of the rest of them. It may look like tabloid-fodder to the rest of the world—travel and parties and smiling for the paparazzi with a friend or four at his side—but there's a reason DecayDance is still around.

There's a reason Pete's bands very rarely get signed away from him.

"What's going on?" Pete asks. Through the phone, Patrick hears the creak of a chair leaning back, then a thumping noise that's maybe feet coming to rest on a desk and yeah, definitely still at the office.

Patrick is silent for a moment. He could just say he was bored, he knows, wasting time before… well, something. Possibly a nine o'clock TV show, or a trip out for dinner with some other music person. Or he could say that he was calling to regale Pete with the latest Last Bastion of Sanity story—because seriously, the fun just never stops with those four—but he's silent maybe a moment too long, because Pete says, "Patrick?" and they may be three-quarters of the fucking country away from each other right now and they might not have seen each other for longer than a weekend at a time in six months, but Pete can still read him better than anyone else in the whole fucking world.

It's really fucking annoying sometimes.

"Patrick," Pete says again, this time sort of half-sighed, and so Patrick says, "I made _People Magazine_'s Star Tracks this week. Did you see?"

It's obviously not what Pete's expecting him to say, and maybe he's just humoring Patrick, or maybe he just trusts that Patrick will get to the point eventually, because Pete says, "Yeah, I saw. I found it taped to my door when I came in this morning. I'm thinking Dirty's the guy to blame. And just so you know: I'm not slipping in my best friend duties here. I was totally going to give you all sorts of shit about it tomorrow, I just wanted to wait a day, to lull you into a false sense of security, so you'd think I maybe hadn't heard." Pete pauses for a moment, then continues. "What was the caption again? Wait, here, let me find it."

Patrick, of course, could simply open his magazine and read it to Pete, but he hears Pete moving papers, a soft "ah, shit," then an "a-ha!" A moment later, Pete is back. "Here we go. 'Stars, they're just like us.'" He makes a sort of sniffling noise, and Patrick can almost picture him wiping a tear away. "They go to concerts! Exclamation point!"

"Fuck the exclamation point," Patrick growls, but Pete just laughs.

"Let's see. It says, 'Thursday, September 21st—' On a school night, Patrick? I'm ashamed of you. 'Music producer Patrick Stump made an appearance at hot-spot The Gateway in the company of Ryan Ross and Spencer Smith, formerly of Panic at the Disco, to watch the Aqua Angel show.' And there you and Ross and Smith are, all posed and smiling for the camera. Should I be feeling jealous, dude? Am I being replaced as your one true sidekick in gossip magazine fame?"

"Oh, fuck off," Patrick says, but he's laughing, too. "It's not my fault that the kids' manager decided it could only help his clients if he leaked the picture to the press." Because that's what the picture was, a shot of Patrick, Ryan, Spencer, and the band in the venue's closet of a green room, the product of the lead singer's, 'hey, would you guys mind…?'

"Well, he's a smart man," Pete says.

There's a pause then, and Patrick almost expects Pete to fill it with some joke at Patrick's expense. Something to make him say 'fuck off' again, laugh, distract him into stories about Ryan and Spencer and Pete's groups and Patrick's latest collaborations, but Pete's a smart man, too. He knows there's a reason Patrick called.

He knows Patrick will eventually clue him in as to why that is.

"I'm going back down to Riverside next week," Patrick says. "For Frank and Jaima's Grand Opening Celebration, or whatever they're calling it. The 'we survived the first week of business and aren't dead and/or bankrupt yet' celebration? Something like that."

"Uh huh?" Pete says, thoughtful enough that Patrick's pretty sure Pete realizes it wasn't a complete non-sequitur, that his brain is already working. Sixteen years of friendship, after all, and Pete's pretty good at following where Patrick's train of thought goes and ending up in the same location. "That should be fun. I think Mikey said that he and Alicia were planning on flying out for it."

"Yeah, yeah they are," Patrick says. "And Gerard's coming down from Portland and Bob apparently has that night off—"

"…and it seems that you know more about the lives of the My Chem folk than I do," Pete says. "I'm sort of feeling out of the loop here, dude." He's laughing, though, a happy sound.

"Hey, _you_ try living within driving distance of Frank Iero and not know what's going on with his band."

Granted, Patrick's only talked to Frank once since their dinner, a confirmation that he actually _is_ going to attend the Grand Opening, and yeah, Ray'll be there, too, because he's the fucking man, and Mikey and Alica were still trying to decide whether or not to leave the cats in the care of the high school kid next door or whether to hire a professional pet sitter, and Bob's coming in that afternoon and leaving late-late that night, because he, also, is the fucking man, and—

"Yeah," Pete says. "Yeah, I'm sure."

There's silence then; Patrick can hear Pete breathing, a steady, even sound, and it's comfortable, still as familiar to Patrick's ears as the sound of his own breath, and if he closes his eyes, it reminds him of nights spent on tour busses, like Pete's only a few feet away, instead of thousands of miles.

"So I was talking to Joe the other night," Pete finally says, understanding in his voice, and Patrick knows it's not a non-sequitur either. "And do you remember that time in Albuquerque, what, six years ago? With the flame thrower?"

Patrick laughs, because _yeah_ he remembers and also _flame thrower_ and he settles back against the couch cushion, closing his eyes again, picturing it, and as Pete keeps talking, he doesn't even really register the People Magazine slipping from his fingers and falling to the floor.  


****

10\. The Grand Opening

  
"So," Patrick says, fifteen minutes into the party, standing between a mannequin in a gold lamé hoodie, a platter of crackers surrounding a bowl of artichoke dip, and Mikey Way. "I feel I should ask: did you end up leaving the cats with the high school kid next door or the professional cat sitter?"

Mikey stares at him for a moment, blinking once, then again, then asks, "Pete?"

"Frank, actually," Patrick says. "He called to double-check I'd be able to come tonight, then spent the next half hour filling me in on your cats and Bob's car troubles and how Gerard was feeling as if his publisher was just not comprehending his artistic vision. It was an enlightening conversation."

Mikey laughs at that, high-pitched and reedy. "I'm surprised you didn't hang up on him. If I'd been in your shoes, I probably would have. Preferably before he started discussing my pet-sitting options."

"Actually," Patrick says, "he led with that. Probably because when we had dinner a few weeks ago, I started talking about Andy's refusal to leave Beast behind. Ever." At Mikey's raised eyebrow, Patrick says, "Beast is his Chihuahua. But it's not that big an issue, because his guitar player is pretty fucking attached to his own two teacup poodles. So, you know, when they tour, they plan for pets."

Mikey ducks his head, possibly to hide his smile—although why, Patrick doesn't know; he laughs pretty much every time he thinks of Beast in his little studded Clandestine collar—then they both turn back out to face the sales floor.

Most of the display racks have been pushed away from the center of the room to give the group space to mingle, and there's a table with sparkling cider and beer and a bowl full of bright red punch off to the left. The food, obviously, is next to Patrick.

He reaches for another handful of chips, watching as Alica and Jamia walk the perimeter of the store, arms linked. Gerard and Ray and Karen are standing near the punch, while Bob is sprawled out in one of the winged chairs that's scattered around the sales floor. He's got his head tipped back, eyes closed.

"I give it thirty seconds before Frank pounces," Mikey says, his gaze apparently following Patrick's. He raises an eyebrow in Patrick's direction, an almost challenge, and Patrick nods, accepting.

It takes twenty. One second people are standing around talking, then next Frank is letting out a whoop, vaulting around the back of the chair, and landing in Bob's lap. He's practically cackling with laughter, which only increases when Bob says, "Fuck _off_, Iero," and dumps him on the floor.

"Help!" Frank says, hooking a hand around Bob's calf, then ducking out of the way of Bob's half-hearted kick. "He's abusing me! Help!"

"Uh huh," Gerard says, before turning back to Karen, and Patrick sees that off to the side of the room, Jamia's just shaking her head fondly.

"Somebody!" Frank says, and Patrick watches as Bob extends a hand, as if to help Frank up, then stands himself, drawing his hand out of reach, and stepping over Frank to get to the drink table.

"Be glad you weren't ever trapped on a bus with us for longer than an afternoon," Mikey says. "This was pretty much an hourly part of the Frank show. "

Patrick nods. He remembers. But also—

"I lived with Pete for pretty much a decade," he says. "And Joe. And Andy. I know how this goes."

The door to the shop opens again, then, letting in two people that Patrick doesn't know, but everyone else seems to, because there are hugs and arm punches and Ray saying things like, "Fuck, man, it's fucking awesome to see you! How the hell have you been? Man, look at you!"

"Cortez," Mikey says by way of explanation. "And Josh, one of our other techs. A lot of people have made their way out to LA over the years, you know?"

"Some even stay," Patrick says, and Mikey nods.

Patrick thinks maybe they're both thinking of Pete at the end of Fall Out Boy, with his plans, his house in Santa Monica, his cars, his nights of schmoozing at the hotspots, making the covers of gossip magazines just as frequently as ever. A year later, though, he showed up on Patrick's stoop, fresh from the airport, from a few days back home, and the first words out of his mouth were, "So, I, uh. I sort of put in an offer on this place just outside of Chicago yesterday…"

"Like you," Mikey says, breaking Patrick's train of thought, and Patrick shrugs his shoulders. "Like me."

More people show up then, two girls and a guy, and this time Mikey stands up a little straighter. Patrick sees Alicia already heading towards the door and Mikey says, "Hey, if you'll excuse me, I want to go say hi to—" and Patrick says, "Sure, yeah, of course. I need to go say hi to Gerard anyway."

*

He finishes the night sitting on the floor next to Bob's chair, head leaning back against one of the display cases. He's got an empty glass in his hand, a plate with three crackers on it on his knee, and he thinks he should be starting to drag, because it's Sunday, because he was at the studio for four hours that afternoon and he still has an hour and a half drive to get back home.

Bob is playing the air drums, though, complete with vocal sound effects, and Frank is standing in front of them, head banging while Gerard screams lyrics to some song Patrick's never heard before. They're all laughing, though, Patrick, too, and there's a shout of triumph when they're done. It just seems to be a par-for-the-course moment in My Chemical Romance time, though, because then Gerard turns back to Jamia and Frank points out one of the t-shirts on the wall to Ray, and Bob says, "This is pretty awesome, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Patrick says, unsure whether he means the gathering or the store or something else entirely, but whatever it is, he agrees. "It is."

"It's been a year since we were all together like this in one place, but even then Cortez wasn't there, Josh wasn't there. It's been fucking years since _everyone_— And, I mean, you wouldn't think it, right, what with Ray and Frank in New Jersey and Mikey in New York and Gerard's mom always on his case to come home, you know? But Frank moves out here, and suddenly we all make the time."

"That's how it happens," Patrick says. "That's how it is." Except it's really not for him, them, because Pete and Joe and Andy are all in Chicago still—still see each other all the fucking time, he knows. In their group _he's_ the only one that needs to make any sort of effort at all for the four of them to get together.

There's a moment of silence then, not quite uncomfortable, before Patrick says, "So I drove past our old apartment the other day, and you know? Someone actually had a cactus out on the porch."

"Ha, really?" Bob asks, and Patrick says, "Yeah, it was fucking gigantic. Like, taller than I am, with this fucking hideous pink flower sprouting out the top of it, absolutely huge, right? Like, larger than my _head_."

To which Bob says, "So basically, they were copying our style. Except failing, since they went with real cacti rather than the ever-classy inflatable plastic."

"Exactly," Patrick says. "I mean, where's the fun in real? You can't punch them, 'cause they don't bounce back up at you, and also, you'd end up with a fist full of little needles. Which: ouch. And you actually need to water them—"

"Except Trohman watered _ours_," Bob says, and Patrick laughs.

"Oh, fuck, I forgot about that. He was so fucking _high_ that day."

Bob shakes his head, then grunts a little as Gerard sits down on the arm of his chair, foot kicking lightly at Bob's ankle.

"Who?" he asks, head tilted slightly to the side, and he's closer to 41 now than 40, but he still looks young to Patrick, face round, hair still jet black.

"Trohman," Bob says. "Joe. He watered our plastic cacti at that Fourth of July picnic we had, remember? Or tried to? But he was using a hose and had the pressure turned up high enough that it knocked the thing off our balcony? And he ended up spraying that model who lived next door instead because he didn't think to lower the damn thing?"

"Joe," Gerard says fondly, and Patrick says, "Yeah, Joe. I'll have to remember to tell that story to his girls when they're older. He plays at being respectable now, but they'll have to know the truth eventually."

"Most of us play at being respectable," Gerard says. "Some of us even mostly succeed."

"And some of us don't even try," Frank says, flopping down onto the ground in front of Bob and Patrick. Ray's pulling over another chair now, and it's then that Patrick realizes that pretty much everyone else has gone: Matt Cortez and the other tech, the rest of Frank and Jamia's friends. It's just him and the guys and, well, Jamia and Alica and Karen, and—

Mikey and Alica join their circle, sharing a chair, and Jamia lies down so that her head is on Frank's stomach, and Karen sits on the arm of Ray's chair, and if Patrick doesn't think about it too hard, it could almost be a scene from eleven years before, all of them sprawled out in Patrick and Bob's apartment, Joe and Andy and Pete out getting ice, just gone for a few minutes.

Except that Patrick knows they aren't.

Patrick starts when a foot kicks lightly at his thigh, and he looks across the circle to see Frank grinning at him. "Hey," he says, "no spacing out. The party's just getting started, dude."

Patrick opens his mouth to say, 'I wasn't', or possibly, 'I should really start thinking about going…' because he does have to be at work the next morning, but Gerard says, "Hell yeah. We haven't even started the 'Do you remember when?' part of the evening yet."

"Except Stump and I totally already did," Bob says. "We were recalling fond memories of inflatable cacti. You all are just lagging behind here."

"Well we'll have to catch up then," Gerard says, and for a moment, Patrick really wants to leave, because this is not his band, these are not his stories, but then Gerard is launching into a story that involves Mikey and Ray and a plastic reindeer and maybe, Patrick thinks, it's really not so different after all.

Especially when Mikey says, "Hey, Stump, didn't Pete have some sort of adventure with one of those lawn flamingos once upon a time? What was that all about?"

Patrick laughs. "Ha, yeah, yeah he did. But it was actually Andy that started that one."

"Andy?" Jamia asks, and Patrick nods, grinning. "See," he says, "we were driving through this little town in Indiana and this house on the outskirts had this, like, _flock_ of pink plastic flamingos in their yard and—"

And by the end of the story, when Bob's picked up the narrative thread, telling some story from his latest tour that also involves flamingos, and possibly garden gnomes, Patrick's leaning back against the display case, relaxed. He looks across the circle and sees Frank grinning at him, completely happy, and yeah, Patrick thinks, really not so different at all.  


****

11\. The Words

  
Patrick smiles, just a little, when he checks his email the next morning and finds the message waiting in his inbox. It's flagged with an exclamation point—important!—because Pete always flags his emails that way. Even the forwards: pictures of dogs nursing tiger cubs and freaky cloud formations and the sort of dirty jokes that Patrick can't read at work, because, well, they're usually pretty fucking disgusting. Also because Amanda has some sort of weird dirty joke radar, and she'll inevitably read it over Patrick's shoulder and then for the next two days, she'll try telling it to anyone who will stand still for longer than ten seconds.

This isn't a forward, though, or a dirty joke. The subject line reads _tomorrows are starting to taste like yesterdays_ and Patrick knows what he'll find inside: a few lines, paragraphs, pages of Pete's babbling, the long distance equivalent of the notebook pages that Pete used to give him.

It's no coincidence, he knows, that Pete sent this to him last night, while he was in Riverside, laughing at Frank's antics, Bob's dry jokes, Gerard's over-the-top theatrics. It's no coincidence he's getting the message this morning, when he's going off of five hours of sleep, when he can still almost hear the echo of laughter in his ears. Because Pete is Pete and always will be Pete, no matter that they're three-quarters of the way across the country from each other.

Patrick wouldn't have it any other way, though.

He wants to click, open it up, read—his mouse is already hovering over the link, ready—but he _knows_ how easy it is for him to get lost in Pete's words, how he'll look up and it will be noon and Last Bastion will have been waiting for him in the studio for, oh, two hours at that point.

He's still tempted to say 'fuck it', though, and open the message up, might even do it, but then Amanda knocks on the door of his office, leans her head in, and says, "So, do we want to place bets on whether Last Bastion survived their weekend or not? I didn't see any mentions of inter-band homicide on the Rolling Stone website this morning, but still. It might not have made the morning papers…"

Patrick laughs as he closes his inbox, stands. He says, "Ha, yeah. Who knows, though, maybe they'll be on their best behavior, and, you know, speaking?"

Amanda arches one of her eyebrows, then tugs at one of her pigtails, looking overly confused. "Last Bastion of Sanity? On speaking terms? And what is this 'best behavior' that you speak of? I do not understand."

"Yeah," Patrick says as he makes his way around the desk. "That's just crazy talk, isn't it? It doesn't hurt to be optimistic, though."

Amanda giggles at that, stepping out into the hall. "There's optimistic, Stump, and then there's delusional. You don't want to be labeled as delusional, do you?"

With one last look back at his computer, Patrick shuts his door and turns towards Last Bastion's preferred studio.

"Yeah, yeah," he says. "I know."

*

Patrick resists opening the email until he gets back to his house that night, until he's got his takeout curry on a plate on his coffee table, silverware and napkins and a can of Pepsi there, too. He's also got his guitar on the couch cushion beside him, a notebook and pen at the ready. He is prepared.

_Then_ he opens up his laptop.

_Then_ he clicks on Pete's email.

He should just print it out right there, right then, he knows, but as valiantly as he resisted that morning, it's habit to start reading as soon as the words are in front of him. To try to understand what's going on in Pete's head at any given moment.

So he reads.

It's about six paragraphs worth of type, maybe a page in total: cracks in sidewalks; windows left open overnight, curtains blowing in the wind; roads changing from paved to dirt. Different thoughts, but all variations on a theme of friendship, distance stretching out, but the heart not growing any less fond, and Patrick wonders if this is what Pete was doing last night, while Patrick was sitting on Frank's floor, laughing at Bob's squeaky-voiced imitation of the lead singer of the band he's doing sound for.

He can picture Pete curled up on the couch in his DecayDance office, door closed, notebook balanced on his knees, pen caught between his teeth as he thought through what he wanted to say. Patrick can picture it, and wonders if Pete was picturing him at the Grand Opening party, feeling just as out of place as he ended up feeling a few times. If Pete knew how _wrong_ moments of the night before felt, how there were times Patrick started looking around the room for Pete, Joe, Andy, before he remembered where exactly he was.

He wonders if right now, Pete's picturing Patrick sitting here like this, looking over Pete's words.

Patrick can almost picture Pete standing in front of him, shifting awkwardly, waiting for Patrick's reaction.

Except, if Pete really was there right now, he'd probably be on his way out the door, because as much as Patrick knows Pete trusts him to understand his words, Pete's rarely been able to stay silent enough for Patrick's liking during the first read-through.

'Are you at the part where—', Pete would ask, or, 'When I was writing that line, I was thinking about—' and Patrick would be forced to kick him out of the lounge or the hotel room or Patrick's car.

After the first read-through, though, on those rare occasions Pete _was_ still around, Pete would usually leave on his own, because by the time Patrick finished the first reading, notes and chords and key changes would be starting to appear in his head, and he'd already be getting lost in the creative process. Sometimes, then, Pete would leave immediately, sometimes he'd stay for ten minutes, maybe half an hour; Patrick was never really sure because he rarely heard him go.

When Pete came back, though, an hour, two, three later, he'd say, 'So?', looking nervous, excited, and Patrick would strum a few chords, sing a line or two. Pete would always nod along with the beat, eyes shining, grin widening.

Pete may not be in LA, but his words are, and nothing's changed with this at least, because one read-through down and Patrick's already seeing fragments that are practically chorus-ready, two lines from paragraph two, one from paragraph six, and there's a rhythm to them already: solid enough that he can almost _hear_ the music in his head.

He prints Pete's email off then, finally, picks his guitar up off of the couch beside him, and his fingers instinctively go to the strings, strumming lightly, echoing the chords in his head. Chord, chord, riff, and as the printer in the corner of the room whirrs, he pauses to jot the sequence down on the notebook beside him, not noticing as his curry slowly grows cold on the table in front of him.  


****

12\. The Visitor (II)

  
There's a host at the door, suit and tie, a bow of the head as he says, "If you'll follow me, gentlemen?" and Spencer motions for Patrick to go first, following the man's winding path through the tables. They end up at one to the far left of the stage, near the front, an older couple in evening dress to one side of them, a few kids to the other, dressed in t-shirts, barely looking old enough to even be sitting there.

Compared to them, Patrick doesn't feel so out of place in his sweater and jeans. He's here for three days of studio work with a solo artist, one song's worth of time, and that's what he packed for. Still, he glances over at Spencer and says, "You said this was a small place. You said it was pretty casual."

Spencer raises an eyebrow at him, pushing hair away from his forehead. "It is."

And yeah, okay, Patrick guesses that in the grand tradition of Las Vegas glitz, this probably is small and casual, what with there only being about 25 tables, maybe 60 people in the room.

"Still, though," he says, wiping his hands on his jeans, and Spencer rolls his eyes.

"This is Vegas," he says, like that explains it all, and maybe, Patrick thinks, it does.

Still, he's glad when the lights over the table area dim, at the same time brightening at the front of the room. From his vantage point, he can see girls hovering in the wings of the stage, mostly hidden from view by the curtains. They're wearing something akin to can-can outfits: bright red satin, black netting, feathers in their hair.

"Ladies and gentlemen," a familiar voice says, edged with laughter, a smirk, and then Brendon is there, walking onto the stage from the side that Patrick can't see. "Welcome, welcome! I think I can safely say, you all are in for a show tonight."

And he's wearing a top hat, tails. He's got a silver-handled cane in his hands and he twirls it as he walks the stage, and he grins almost wickedly when his dancers make their way out to join him. Patrick sneaks a glance at the older couple sitting beside them, wondering what they'll think of the girls' clothing, which looks even more risqué underneath the spotlights: corsets done up tight, cut low enough that they're showing a whole fuck load of skin, high-heeled boots over fish-net stocking covered legs that seem to stretch on forever.

The band starts up, a mix of brass and strings and electric vibes, reminiscent of Panic's first album, and Patrick had always thought that Ryan was the driving force behind most of their early showmanship, but maybe he was wrong. Or maybe Ryan was just able to tell, even back then, exactly what sort of showman Brendon was. He spares another glance back to Spencer, who's staring at the stage, an almost fond look on his face, before he turns his attention back to Brendon.

The girls are mostly dancing with each other, something akin to a waltz spliced together with high kicks, but Brendon's got one of them on each arm, and his eyes are so bright, his mouth spread into such a wide smile as he sings, Patrick can't help losing himself in the show.

*

A few members of the crowd are still lingering when Brendon finally makes it out to their table, dressed in his street clothes. He turns one of the chairs around, plopping down in it and resting his arms along the back, like this was Jon's bar, back in Chicago, not a _dinner theatre_ with gold paint on the walls.

"Hi!" Brendon says, grin wide, and there's still sweat on his forehead, smudges of makeup around his lips and eyes. The girls are coming out the door from the back in groups of two or three, most of them making their way by Patrick and Spencer's table, laying hands on Brendon's shoulder, a few leaning down to kiss his cheek.

Brendon wiggles his eyebrows at Patrick the third time this happens and says in a stage whisper, "I fucking love my job. Seriously."

"He really does," Spencer says, nodding so solemnly that Patrick laughs.

"I keep telling Spence that he's welcome to get up on stage with me any night he wants," Brendon says, "but he keeps turning me down."

"Because I _know_ you, Urie. I get up on stage with you, you'd talk the girls into getting me into the middle of a fucking can-can line or something, and believe me, that's the last thing _any_ of us want."

Patrick watches as Brendon opens his mouth, but the denial that he's expecting to hear never comes. Instead, Brendon closes his mouth, then starts to open it again, but before he can speak, Spencer says, "See? I know you!" and Brendon says, "No, Spencer Smith, you don't. I wouldn't make you do the can-can. I was thinking something more along the lines of, of—"

"The can-can," Spencer says, and Brendon sighs, says, "Fine, yes, the can-can, but it's really not bad! The girls and I do it five nights a week!"

"And thus the reason I will never be joining you on stage," Spencer says. Then he turns to Patrick. "Be thankful Brendon was never in your band. Then you'd have to put up with things like this."

Brendon pouts, of course, almost batting his eyes in Spencer's direction, then Patrick's, undoubtedly trying to look adorable in the way they all became immune to a decade ago.

"You don't have a Pete in your band, though," Patrick says. "Believe me, the can-can is pretty fucking tame compared to some of the stuff he's tried to get me to do over the years. And no, I'm not going to go into details," he says when Brendon's eyes light up, pout miraculously disappearing. "I don't want to give you ideas."

"Please, please don't," Spencer says. "Ryan and Jon egg him on from a distance, but I'm the one who has to deal with him on a daily basis."

"And you know you'll miss me when you're gone," Brendon says, sighing deeply, and Patrick's nodding along before his brain truly registers what Brendon said. He says, "Wait, what?"

Spencer shrugs, an almost lackadaisical gesture, and leans back in his chair.

"He's going to be _leaving_ me," Brendon says, and if it were five years ago, or maybe even three, Patrick is pretty sure that Brendon would have been up and out of his chair then, arms wrapped tightly around Spencer, holding on for dear life.

As it is, he's back to leaning his head on his arms again, and he actually does look sort of pathetic.

"I'm not leaving _you_," Spencer says. "I'm just going to be taking a small break from Vegas for a few weeks. In two _months_."

"Leaving me," Brendon repeats. "_Leaving me_," and Spencer actually leans forward to slap lightly at the side of Brendon's head. Brendon ducks out of the way, of course, giggling in that way he has. "Leaving, leaving!"

Spencer turns to Patrick and shakes his head, and Patrick nods in sympathy.

"One of my kids, from Sweet Midori, is already panicking about their next tour—it's their first national tour and they tried some new stuff on the album, and it's one thing to create in the studio, you know, and another to do it on stage every night. So, long story short, I said I'd come out to LA for a few weeks, give him some extra lessons, if he needed them."

"Also, Ryan's always trying to get him out there," Brendon says. "Because Ryan is trying to steal Spencer from me."

"Because Ryan is evil like that," Spencer says, tone serious, even as he raises an eyebrow in Patrick's direction. "It is all part of his grand master plan, right?"

"Exactly," Brendon says. "Because that is a very Ryan Ross thing to do."

Patrick says, "You could be right. He did learn the business at the hands of Pete Wentz, after all."

Brendon sits up straight again. "See, Spence? Patrick knows! Patrick sees Ryan's plan for what it really is!"

Spencer, of course, just sighs, but Patrick and Brendon laugh in tune.  


****

13\. The Bass Line

  
Patrick's been in the studio for about half an hour, running the same five stanzas over and over again, moving a chord up a third here, down a fifth there, and he's concentrating: on the guitar that's balanced across his knees, on the strings beneath his fingers. He's focused deeply enough that he doesn't notice Adam standing in the doorway until he stops playing for longer than a beat. Until he hears a "Sounds good."

Patrick doesn't jump. He spent too many years living with Pete and Joe to be startled so easily, but he does blink at Adam once, twice, before he shakes his head and says, "Oh, yeah, hey." Then, "Thanks."

Adam ducks his head a little, running his fingers through his bangs, pushing them back along his scalp, before dropping his arms and crossing them over his chest. He's fidgeting a little, looking a little unsure as to what he's actually doing there, but he stands his ground, says, "Can I ask what it is?"

"Oh," Patrick says. "Just this song I'm, uh. Working on."

"Who for?" Adam asks, and Patrick can tell he's thinking about Last Bastion, or one of the other artists Patrick's been working with, so he starts shaking his head. "No one, it's not for anyone. It's just. For fun. This is just me… playing."

Now Adam grins, widely enough that Patrick is forced to ask, "What?"

"Nothing," Adam says, flipping one of his hands where it's pinned under his crossed arms. Then, after Patrick arches one of his eyebrows, maybe high enough that it disappears under the bill of his hat, "You know, most people, when they 'play', they record their song in fucking Garage Band, or something. You use a fully equipped studio and mixing board."

If Pete was here, Patrick thinks, he would have said something along the lines of, 'well, _duh_.' Patrick just shakes his head, though. Or starts to, anyway, before he grins and says, "Well, you know. I do fucking own the place. Might as well use it for my own purposes once in awhile, right?"

"Right," Adam says, and Patrick drops his gaze back to his fingers, strumming the last chord he'd played again, again, again, then he backs up two stanzas and moves forward from there, once, repeat, and when he opens his eyes again—although he doesn't remember closing them—Adam's still standing there, watching him.

He shifts when Patrick meets his gaze, then glances over his shoulder, back out into the hallway. He was working with Gary earlier, Patrick knows, sitting in on a session with one of the new age-y bands that Gary's producing, and when Patrick walked by a few hours ago, he'd seen the lead singer sitting in a lotus position on the floor, Adam off in the corner, playing two notes on the piano one after the other, over and over again.

"Hey, I'm sorry," Adam says. "You're working. Or playing. And I'm interrupting. I just. Saw you in here and wanted to say hi. So I'll just be go—" He turns towards the hallway, shifts his weight like he's going to leave, but then Patrick says, "Hey, hold up a sec."

Because he's pretty much been playing the same five stanzas over and over again for the last half hour and something isn't flowing correctly, and maybe, he thinks, hearing someone else play it will help. Maybe it'll let him pretend he's in the sound booth, sitting in front of his mixing board. He'll be able to say, 'yeah, no, not working. Try taking it up a key, down a step, speeding up the tempo,' instead of just hearing the notes in his head, the way they're written on the page in front of him.

Adam's stopped, is standing halfway out the door, and he looks confused when Patrick stands up from his stool and motions for Adam to grab one of the guitars from the stand off to the side of the room.

"If you have some time," Patrick says. "I could, well, use some help. There's this part in this song that I'm—"

Adam looks even more confused, but he's also stepping back into the room, walking over to the guitar stand and grabbing one of the acoustics, before pulling a second stool over next to where Patrick is sitting. Patrick has a music stand set up in front of him, several sheets of staff paper laid out across it, the once neatly printed notes now sloppy with his notations.

He twists the stand in Adam's direction, then says, "This is what I've been—" before trailing off, because Adam's eyes are already scanning the music, reading Pete's words. He's had those together for two weeks, the chorus together for just as long, but then he had to work on the next two Last Bastion songs, then there was Vegas, and he's only been able to doodle on this in his spare moments since.

Adam's already tuning the guitar though, then moving his fingers over the first row of chords, feeling the sound of them. He doesn't mouth the words, though, for which Patrick is grateful, because they are _Pete's_ words, and while he's okay sharing his music, because it's his, the words are—

The words are different.

A moment later, Adam looks up at Patrick expectantly, and Patrick points to a stanza about halfway down the second page, just before the chorus, and says, "There's something in here that's just not—" Flowing, working, sounding right at _all_, but he waves his hand in a small circle, instead of saying the words.

Adam nods. "Do you want me to start there?" he asks, already tracing his finger across the staff that Patrick had pointed to, but Patrick shakes his head.

"I actually think from the beginning would be best. Then you can see how it flows and I'll be able to—"

"To see what's not working?"

"Exactly."

He sits back on his stool and he thinks, maybe, he should put his guitar down, but he holds it on his lap instead, and as Adam starts, his fingers start moving over the strings, too, soundlessly. His eyes slip closed again, and it does help, he realizes, hearing it instead of playing it, because he can almost see the chords flow from one to the other, smooth and arcing, but then there's the catch, a sharp drop-off, like a cliff, except from this end, Patrick can almost picture the bridge to the other side.

He opens his eyes and notices that Adam's watching him, curious, and Patrick gestures for him to stop. He plays the problem chords again, except this time, moves the notes up a third, the next chord up another one, and it peaks, crescendos, and then winds downwards into the chorus.

Patrick catches Adam's gaze, quirks his eyebrow upwards in an unspoken 'yes?' and Adam is nodding.

He apparently was watching Patrick's fingers, too, because he picks up two stanzas from where Patrick had stopped him before, and continues on, incorporating in Patrick's changes, and then he keeps on going, further, into the chorus, and Patrick joins in. He matches Adam chord for chord, or maybe it's the other way around, since this is Patrick's music, Patrick's song. Either way, their fingers are moving in unison, the song building around them, and Pete's words are going through Patrick's head, and he doesn't realize that he's mouthing them, singing them until he hears his own voice in his ears, and Adam is nodding along, and Patrick thinks, yes.

Yes.

Yes.  



	5. Snapshots from a Possible Future [14-17]

14\. The Idea

  
Frank takes a bite of his veggie burger, and then, in the midst of chewing, says, "So I joined a bowling team." He's sitting forward, elbows on the table, and as Patrick raises an eyebrow in his direction, he puts his burger down and picks up his Pepsi, smirking around the lip of the glass.

"We're the Bendy Buccaneers," Frank continues, putting his glass back down and picking his burger up again, taking another bite, then just holding it. "We have matching shirts and everything: pink, with skulls and crossbones embroidered under our names. They're pretty awesome."

"Uh huh," Patrick says slowly, running one of his fries through a small mountain of ketchup.

They're at a diner-type place not too far from his studio, but it's still early enough—it's only about 4:30—that the dinner rush hasn't started yet. There's an elderly couple sitting in a booth by the window, some kids drinking milkshakes at the counter, and Patrick and Frank are sitting at a table off to the side of the room, near the doors to the kitchen. The six of them, that's it. In another two hours, though, Patrick knows the line will be out the door.

After eating his fry, he grins at Frank. "Dare I ask who your fellow Bendy Buccaneers are? Jamia, Karen?"

Frank just grins more widely, shaking his head.

"Its sort of like a Bend Street Merchant's team, actually. There's me, obviously, and Eduardo, the guy who owns that Mexican place I took you to? Then there's the guy who owns the bookstore next to us. His name is Herbert. Herbert von Schnickle, and he has a goatee." At this, Frank pinches the air by his upper lip, miming the twirling of said goatee. "And for our fourth, we totally pulled off a coup. Get this: the kid who works at the coffee place on the corner? He's member of the UC Riverside collegiate bowling team. And we totally stole him away from the Black Basalts. They're a group of professors from the school's geology department."

"Uh *huh*," Patrick says again, then picks another fry up off of his plate and bites it in half.

"I know, right?" Frank says. He's dismembering his veggie burger now, Patrick sees, tearing the bun into smaller pieces, then the lettuce. He's already eaten the tomato, thankfully, or Patrick might have to worry about ducking out of the way of squirting juice. "He actually has a bowling class on his *schedule*. I keep telling him, like, dude, where were the bowling classes when I was in school?"

"So what?" Patrick asks. "This is a once a week thing? You compete against other teams?"

Frank nods, then pops a bit of the bun into his mouth. "Monday nights, eight o'clock." He bites into a strip of lettuce then, chewing it almost thoughtfully. "They turn on the disco lights at nine, start playing this totally retro music, and you know, you really haven't lived until you've seen the biker dude in the lane next to you do the electric slide during his approach, complete with shoulder shimmies, and somehow *still* manage to get a strike!"

Patrick laughs at that, his head falling back. "That sounds like a Pete thing to do. Rock 'n Bowl, disco balls, flashing neon lights… I don't know how many times he dragged me out there with him."

More times than Patrick could possibly count, actually: way back in Chicago, years and years ago, all of them too hopped up on adrenaline to go straight back to their houses after a show; later, when they were out on the road, after too many night spent away from home, all of them needing something (anything) familiar.

"It's awesome," Frank says. "Fuck, Ray. Ray used to *love* the bowling. He had his own ball and everything, some giant thing that I could barely lift, you know? And Gerard and Mikey and I would be using, like, the 12 pound balls—the ones that were fucking pink and orange and yellow and shit—and we'd be lobbing them down the lanes, and there he'd be with his smooth rolling and his perfect form…"

"Disgusting," Patrick says, and Frank nods, scrunching up his nose.

"Yeah, exactly. On the plus side, though, I'm actually getting better. I broke 120 yesterday, and that's a first." He wipes his fingers on the napkin beside his plate, then holds his hand up for Patrick to slap, so Patrick does.

"Somehow I would have thought Jamia would have been into the bowling, too," Patrick says after a moment, and Frank shakes his head, sadly.

"Oh, she bowls. She's better than I am, actually, but she's the one who said I needed an extra-curricular activity. Apparently she *doesn't* want me hanging about the store at all hours. She says I'm a distracting influence."

Again, Patrick laughs. "Gee, I can't imagine why."

Frank, of course, is doing his best to look innocent, wide eyes and open smile, but Patrick has known Frank for too long to be fooled for even one moment. He just stares until Frank ducks his head and says, "Oh, shut up."

"But the store is going well?" Patrick asks after a moment, and Frank's grin widens.

"Yeah, yeah," he says, "it's great," and just like that, he's off: telling about the three kids from UC Riverside they've hired, about what the first item they sold was, about how they're already working with some other independent retailers in the area, carrying some of their products, soaps and perfumes and jewelry, in exchange for their stores carrying some of the staples of Jamia's clothing line.

"It'll take a little while for us to turn a profit," Frank says, "but we're already doing better than we expected we'd be doing, and, you know, we're already building up repeat clientele, so that pretty much kicks ass."

Patrick nods, then picks his own glass of Diet Pepsi up off of the table, sips at it. He remembers Pete opening up his clothing stores, the Clandestine outlets, but at the same time, it had been different; Pete had always had people to run the stores for him. He'd never had to work the counter, take care of inventory, do the daily grind.

"But we're pretty much off the ground now," Frank says, "and Jai is starting to drop even less subtle hints that I don't need to be there every hour of every day. So now I'm trying to entertain myself."

Which was also the reason he called Patrick up that morning, an hour or so after Patrick made it into the studio, and said, "So, Stump, the wife is kicking me out of the store today. What do you say to an early dinner?"

He glances down at his plate again now, though, picking up a piece of bun that's still large enough to be torn into even smaller bits. Then he looks back up at Patrick, a sudden gesture.

"Actually, I was going to ask you, um, if you might be interested in jamming sometime. You know, just fooling around on the guitars. I know you're busy and all, but. I don't know that many people here yet, and my fingers are getting itchy, dude, and I—"

He trails off, and Patrick swallows and thinks back to his recent sessions with Spencer and Brendon and Adam, the apparent itchiness in his own fingers, and he says, "Yeah, yeah. That would be—sometime, yeah, we definitely should."

Frank's grin pretty much splits his face.  


  
****

15\. The Question

  
The last track finishes and for a second there is silence, but it only lasts for a moment, a breath, then Casey, the lead singer of Last Bastion, is launching herself at her drummer, wrapping her arms tightly around him. Patrick watches as she smacks a kiss to his cheek, then pulls back far enough to open her arms for the rest of the band. They become pretty much a lump, all of them wound together, and Patrick may or may not hear sniffling and wet-sounding whispers.

"—did it, did it, did it—" Casey keeps saying, her voice cracking every other word, and it's such a change from several weeks ago. Patrick infinitely prefers this part of the recording process, the feeling of having accomplished something that they're all proud of.

"It almost makes the screaming and shouting and the endless repeats of 'fuck you' worth it, doesn't it?" Amanda asks softly. She's sitting in the chair next to Patrick. They'd let Last Bastion have the loveseat, the comfortable armchairs, the four of them all pressed as close to possible together, holding hands for the 49 minutes and 42 seconds their album played.

"Yeah," Patrick says, and his voice draws Casey's attention, apparently, because it's just a moment longer before she disentangles herself from her band mates and throws herself in Patrick's direction.

Her bangs, dyed blue this week, are hanging down over her eyes, but before she buries her face against his neck, he sees a flash of smile—wide, uncontrolled—and then she saying, "Thank you, thank you, fuck, fuck, thank *you*," and Patrick is awkwardly patting her back, Amanda not even trying to hide her giggles beside him.

"Yeah, yeah," the drummer says, standing up from the loveseat. "Thank you, dude." Then, "Dudes, dudes, fuck! We've got to go celebrate! Because we're fucking done!" And that seems to be the magic word, because three minutes later, Patrick finds himself alone in the room with Amanda, who is still looking far too fucking amused.

"Oh, Patrick," she coos after the door is shut behind the group. "Thank you! Thank you for making us sound like we haven't spent the last two months screaming obscenities at each other!" She bats her eyes in Patrick's direction, twirling one of her braids around the tip of her finger, as she does it, and Patrick has no choice but to respond with, "Oh shut up."

Amanda leans back in her chair then, giggles settling into a large grin, and Patrick rolls his eyes.

"You know, this whole ordeal would have been easier," Amanda says, "if they weren't so fucking catchy."

"They wouldn't have stayed beyond the first day if their music wasn't so fucking catchy," Patrick says, because no matter how many headaches they've caused him since they first walked into his studio, there's a reason he agreed to work with them. There's a reason he *didn't* kick them out weeks and weeks ago.

"And now we're done," Amanda says, and Patrick nods.

Just then, there's a knock on the door of the room, and he looks up to see Adam standing outside, his knuckles still tentatively raised. Patrick motions him in, and watches as Adam opens the door. He steps inside, far enough to let it close behind him, but doesn't come any further.

"So, I just saw Last Bastion leaving the building," he says, and Amanda says, "Never to return. Until they want our very own P. Stump to produce the follow-up to their multi-platinum major label debut, anyway."

Patrick ducks his head at that, attempts to brush Amanda's words away with his hand, but she just reaches over and pulls his hat up off of his forehead, which changes the motion into a quick (and unsuccessful) grab.

"Fuck," Patrick says, once he finally has the hat back in his possession again, jammed firmly back over his head. "Why do I keep you around again?"

"Because your master recordings would be hopelessly muddled without me?" Amanda asks, attempting to look innocent, and Patrick just sighs, rolling his eyes in Adam's direction, as if to say, 'see what I put up with on a daily basis?'

Adam, the fucker, just grins.

"So Jacobson," Amanda says. "I was just about to suggest that Stump and I take a page from the Last Bastion handbook and go celebrate. You in? You certainly put in your time on this album, too."

Piano on four songs, cymbals on a fifth, and earlier in the week, Patrick heard Casey asking her drummer if he thought they should maybe ask Adam to come out with them, be a tech, do parts on stage that they needed him to do. He hadn't heard the drummer's answer, but he knows that it'd probably be a whole lot more fulfilling for Adam than the work he's been doing for the new age album Gary's been producing, playing repetitive meditation-inducing chords on the piano for days on end.

Adam blinks, then grins and nods, pushing his bangs away from his face. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, sure. Just let me grab my— I mean, now?"

Amanda stands up, extending a hand to Patrick to pull him up, and she says, "Hell yeah. Didn't you hear? We're done, and I, personally, am voting for imbibing serious quantities of alcohol. Before dinner, even."

She hooks her elbow around Adam's arm as she opens the door, leading him back out into the hallway, then glances back over her shoulder at Patrick, saying, "Come on, Stump. We've got serious business to attend to."

*

Two hours later, though, Patrick finds himself nursing a beer. His third, to Adam's four, to Amanda's three vodka tonics, but she's only spent a few minutes at their table, since when they walked into the bar—her regular—she immediately spotted maybe five people she knew.

There were introductions, of course, and Patrick had ended up talking with one of the girls for fifteen minutes about her experiences mixing sound at one of the venues downtown, but now he and Adam are camped out at a table off to the side of the room, and he's feeling pretty fucking relaxed, actually, for the first time in quite awhile.

"We're almost done with the new Astra album," Adam says. "Thank god. Though she does know what she's talking about with her relaxation-fueling chords; I've nearly gone to sleep in there so many fucking times, the past three days."

"Better you than me," Patrick says, because yeah. The new age stuff sells well, and Gary likes the soothing nature of it, but give Patrick a good guitar riff anytime, one that will make you sit up in your chair, wide awake.

"Ha, yeah," Adam says. He empties his beer bottle, then pushes it towards the edge of the table. "New age shit, though, not really my forte. I'm more of a… I like to do the head banging, you know?"

Patrick does, oh he does. He likes his hip hop and his R&amp;B, his pop and his punk, his pop punk, but there are times when he just wants to lose himself in the chords and lines and riffs which pulse through his blood, body curved around the guitar, drawing the notes out with his fingers.

He runs his finger up the outside of his pint glass, condensation making his finger slick, then back down again, creating a winding maze of a line. There's silence for a moment, before he says, "Hey, listen. My friend Frank—Iero, from My Chemical Romance. You know him, right? Well, he just moved to the area, and he's sort of driving his wife nuts hanging around at their store all day, and we were thinking of getting together and jamming sometime." He pauses, then smiles, just a little. "Knowing him, there will probably be lots of head banging. Possibly climbing, too, onto, like, the fucking amp or something. Would you maybe want to join us?"

Adam opens his mouth just a little, then swallows and says, "Yeah, yeah. Fuck, that'd be, well, pretty fucking awesome, actually," and he's grinning, maybe a little helplessly, and Patrick almost wants to laugh at his expression. Instead he just says, "Okay then." He nods once, then brings his glass to his mouth, finishing it with one large swig. He sets it back down. "Okay, so. I'll let you know."  


  
****

16\. The Unexpected Visitor

  
Four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, and Patrick's been curled up on his couch for the last half hour, making his way through the latest batch of comic books Gerard had told him he had read. "Good stuff, Stump," he'd said. "And *fuck*, some of the *illustrations*."

Which is to say, he's not expecting company.

Which is to say, he's surprised when he doorbell sounds, the fucking *gongs* that Pete got him once upon a time, a groundhogs day gift, and hired someone to install before Patrick could actually say the 'no, fucking no, Wentz, did you hear me? No!' that was echoing in his head. Especially since they're fucking loud—so loud he can hear them back in his bedroom, to which Pete said, "You sleep like a fucking log, you fucker, and damned if I'm going to stand on your fucking porch while you get your beauty sleep."

If they're loud in Patrick's bedroom, though, they're deafening in the living room, and Patrick pretty much jumps every time they sound. Luckily, he's usually the only one around to see himself jump, thus saving him from endless mocking, but *still*.

This time, his fingers slip on the pages of the comic book, tugging at them, luckily not hard enough to tear the paper, and he glares at the door for a second before closing the book and setting it coffee table, on top of the stack that he's already worked his way through that afternoon. He wipes his hands on his jeans, tugs at the bill of his hat, then stands up from the couch and makes his way to the door, peering through the peephole and seeing the distorted face of Spencer Smith.

Patrick opens the door, and indeed, Spencer is standing there, looking rather bored, arms crossed over his chest, plastic bag gripped in his hand. He grins at Patrick, though, and says, "So I was in the neighborhood." Because that's how half the conversations Patrick has these days seem to start, he's decided. Before Patrick can say, 'I can see that', Spencer holds out the plastic bag in Patrick's direction, and says, "I also come bearing gifts, compliments of one Jon Walker."

Patrick takes a bag, already peering inside, even as he steps back away from the door, motioning Spencer in. Spencer follows, then shuts the door himself, watching Patrick pull the hat out of the bag. It's dark blue, 'Tommy Walker's' embroidered on the front in silver thread, the outline of a beer mug behind it, and Patrick grins.

"So Jon's gone into the bar merchandise business?"

"Blame Pete," Spencer says, and indeed, when Patrick looks inside the hat, he sees the Clandestine Industry logo, the Bartskull. "He could hardly let one of us start a new venture without commemorating it with a clothing line, now could he?"

"Ha, yeah," Patrick says, laughing, nodding his agreement. He's pretty sure that the only reason Pete didn't try to make t-shirts for Patrick's studio was, well, because Patrick *had* actually gotten his 'no, *fuck* no,' out that time, before it was too late.

Besides, it wasn't like Pete hadn't made Patrick more personalized t-shirts and hats than he could wear in a lifetime already.

"Jon sent Brendon and I a whole box of stuff to split up," Spencer continues, "but since I knew I was coming out here this week, I figured I'd bring one of the hats to you."

Patrick reaches up to pull the hat he's wearing off, pulling the new one on in its place. Spencer crosses his arms over his chest as he studies Patrick, then nods, a 'that'll do' gesture.

"So why are you here?" Patrick asks. "If you don't mind me asking, that is."

Spencer rolls his eyes. "No, you can't ask, despite the fact that I just showed up on your *doorstep* out of nowhere," he says. "Right."

It's Patrick's turn to roll his own eyes.

"I'm actually here apartment hunting," Spencer says a moment later. "Something with a monthly lease. Because, no matter many times as Ryan's said I can stay in his guest room while I'm out here working with the Sweet Midori kid, there's a difference between staying in someone else's space for a few nights and living there for a few weeks. I've lived in Ryan Ross' space enough for one lifetime, I think we'd both agree."

Patrick totally understands. It's one thing to spend the night on Pete's couch a couple of times a year, or to have Pete crashing in Patrick's guest room over the Fourth of July. It's another thing all together to imagine doing it for a longer period of time. Like, say, a month. Or longer.

He can't even imagine getting back on a bus again, living in such close quarters for more than a few hours with anyone anymore.

Well, most of the time.

"And have you found someplace?" Patrick asks, leading Spencer farther into the house, into the living room, motions for Spencer to sit. Spencer does, taking one of the over-stuffed armchairs, and Patrick takes his spot on the couch again.

He sees Spencer eyeing the comic books, smirking maybe just a little, but it's not like Spencer hadn't spent enough time on the Fall Out Boy bus over the years. He knows what sorts of reading material they kept around.

Spencer doesn't say anything, though. He just shrugs and says, "Eh. There are a few possibilities, but nothing that, you know—" He waves his hand around a little bit. "On the other hand, its only going to be for what, a month? I can deal."

"Actually," Spencer continues before Patrick can comment, "what I can't deal with is the realtor that Ryan picked out. She's really fucking perky, okay, and, like, the places I'm looking at aren't holes, right, because I'm not a struggling artist, but oh my god, you'd think she was showing me around a fucking mansion with two pools and six baths and, like, a sun porch, rather than a one bedroom that comes equipped with it's own washer and dryer. Apparently Keltie knows her from the gym and she had another three places on the list for today, but I said that I had a very important meeting that I just had to get to, and—"

"And here you are," Patrick says.

"Here I am," Spencer says. "Having a very important meeting that, most importantly, means I am not looking at charming green tile, or whatever it was she said was coming up in the next place. To which I did not say, 'Seriously? Green?'"

"Because green is always charming," Patrick says.

"Oh, yes," Spencer says. "Always."

Six months ago, Patrick thinks, it would have felt really fucking weird to have Spencer Smith sitting in his living room like this, mostly because it wasn't something that he ever would have anticipated. Not without the excuse of a DecayDance party. Not without Ryan at Spencer's shoulder, poking at the conversation, keeping it going.

Spencer's looking comfortable, though, like he's actually been here before, when in reality Patrick's pretty sure he hasn't, and right now he's looking around the room, smiling a bit every time he recognizes a piece of memorabilia: a photograph, a set of drumsticks, a framed guitar pick.

Patrick can see the moment that Spencer spots Patrick's guitar case, though, sitting on the floor on the far side of the living room, near the speakers, and he turns to Patrick, raising an eyebrow, giving him a questioning look. Patrick glances down at his knees for a moment, feeling just a little embarrassed. Why, he doesn't know, because there is no one in the world who would be surprised that he, of all people, had a guitar sitting out on his *floor* for fucks sake, but.

But: in four days, Frank and Adam will be in Patrick's basement music room, the three of them playing, well, *something*, and—

And this is not Patrick hijacking Spencer's drum lesson, or him joining Spencer and Brendon and Pete on the stage at Jon's bar. This is something entirely different and. Well.

"I told you that Frank Iero was in town, right? When I was in Vegas?"

Spencer nods, smirking just a little, and Patrick remembers the conversation, too: Brendon saying that LA was turning into the place to be, and what had happened to Chicago being the center of the band world, huh? About how his world view was totally out of alignment now, thank you very much, Stump, and he wasn't sure how he was ever going to recover, etcetera, etcetera, on and on, until Spencer said, "Somehow, Brendon, I think you will survive."

"We're going to jam later this week," he continues. "The two of us and this kid from my studio, Adam, who plays the bass."

"Frank's going to play lead?" Spencer asks, and Patrick nods, because there's no question as to who will be doing the singing, and singing and lead guitar are not the most compatible combination.

"That should be fun," Spencer says, and his voice is dry, but he's not sounding sarcastic at all. It's more of just a statement of fact.

Patrick thinks about giving excuses: Jamia wanting to get Frank out of her hair for a few hours, how it's just for fun, maybe just a one-off, a way to pass the evening.

Instead he just says, "Hopefully, yeah. It should be."  


  
****

17\. The Session

  
The sound of gongs again, after dinner this time, and when Patrick peers through the peephole he sees Frank making a face at him: nose scrunched up, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. Patrick's rolling his eyes as he opens the door, but by the time they're face-to-face, Frank is grinning really fucking widely, showing pretty much all his teeth.

"Hi," Frank says. He's got his guitar case in his hand and he holds it up so that Patrick can see the well-worn leather: parts of it covered with stickers, others painted white and illustrated with sharpie drawings of zombies and vampires—Gerard's influence, Patrick is sure—the edges scuffed and scratched.

"Hi," Patrick says. "Come on in. You're a little early."

"Yeah," Frank says. "I told Jai I'd have plenty of time if I left at six, you know, but she said, no, babe, you should actually try to drive within the speed limit this time, and because she was *glaring*, I grabbed my keys and left. And here I am."

"Early," Patrick says, and Frank nods, looking rather put-upon.

"But this way you have time to give me the grand tour!" Frank says. "Or at the very least, show me where I can plug this baby in." He swings his guitar case forward, and Patrick steps back, out of the way, letting the momentum carry Frank over the threshold.

In the grand scale of Los Angeles houses, Patrick's is not overly large. Two stories and a basement, three bedrooms, one of which Patrick's turned into a studio. It's in a neighborhood where you pay more for the property than the actual building, though, which means he has a lot of space between him and his neighbors, a small measure of privacy.

Frank's nodding his head as he looks around the living room, much like Spencer did a few days before. He doesn't stop at the over-stuffed chair, though. No, he just keeps walking, heading towards the kitchen, and Patrick's really fucking glad he had the maid come today, so that the house is in some semblance of an order. There are still sheets of notepaper scattered around, of course, and there's a set of bongo drums on the dining room table, and a few open packages of guitar strings on his second armchair, but mostly it's okay. Not something he's embarrassed to show off. And besides, it's not like Frank hadn't heard tales of Patrick's less-than-neat-nick lifestyle from Bob, way back when.

"I have my stuff set up in the basement," Patrick says after Frank has spent a few minutes exploring, and he points towards a door underneath the staircase, angled, painted to blend in with the wall. That's where the soundproofing is, the amps and the drums and all of Patrick's guitars.

"Will we be able to hear the kid if we head on down there?" Frank asks and Patrick just raises an eyebrow, looking at the gongs hanging on the wall in his foyer, and even though Frank was nice enough not to comment on it when he came in, the gongs are *really fucking loud*.

"Yeah," Frank says, flashing Patrick a grin. "Of course we will."

He reaches the door first, Patrick just a few steps behind, and Patrick lets him lead the way down the stairs to the basement, too. Frank sort of laughs when he sees it, and looks back up at Patrick, his eyes bright.

"I'm thinking you had fun with the decorating?"

The walls are all different colors: one red, one black, one white, one green, with buckets of paint splashed across them, drips falling wherever they landed. It was Joe's idea, but Pete agreed, talking about artistic juices and Andy said something about creativity begetting more creativity, and they spent a weekend together, the four of them, painting.

Granted, they were all pretty much red and green and blue by the end of the weekend, but still, the room was done, and Patrick pretty much loves it.

"Blame Joe," Patrick says, and Frank nods, looking absolutely entranced. "If you ever show this to Gerard, I'll bet you money he does something like it, too. Like, in his dining room or something. Red walls, black paint splatters to represent something or other. It would be totally him."

"And how would Lyn-Z feel about that?" Patrick asks, and Frank just keeps grinning.

"Oh, she'd be the one tossing the buckets of paint at the wall!"

Patrick points Frank in the direction of the amps and sits down on the stool of his drum kit, watching as Frank gets everything plugged in, as he starts to tune. It's not a guitar that Patrick's seen before: not the black one with the ever-changing saying, or the brilliant white one. This one is checkerboard-patterned, red and white, and in comparison, Patrick's black and white Trohman-special looks positively boring. He's about to say something to this effect when the doorbell sounds from above, and Frank laughs.

"Yeah, okay. I think you'd pretty much have to be in Timbuktu to not hear that."

"I'm pretty sure that was Pete's intention," Patrick says as he stands, heads back upstairs to the front door. He checks through the peephole—because the one time he doesn't will be the one time it's not whomever he's expecting—and indeed, Adam is standing on the other side of the door. Unlike Frank, though, he's not making a face, not already smiling. Instead he's staring down at the ground, and he only glances up once Patrick actually opens the door. Even then, though, his smile is tight, almost nervous.

"Hey," Adam says as he steps inside. "So, uh, sorry if I'm late. I see another car out front so I'm guessing that Frank is already—"

"Frank drives like a bat out of hell," Patrick interrups. "He was early. You're actually right on time." He shuts the door and points in the direction of the basement. "Frank's already down there setting up, if you want to head on down."

Adam nods, but he doesn't move for a moment, and when Patrick glances at him, he thinks Adam's looking a little wide-eyed, maybe a little nervous in a way that he hasn't since the first time he and Patrick played together.

"Come on," Patrick says, trying to hide his smile. "Let's head on down."

He steps around Adam, leading the way to the basement door, then down the stairs, Adam following only a step behind. Frank's already playing, leaning against one of the amps, fingers picking out staccato notes, sharp and precise, then pausing to tighten a string, before he plays the same notes over again, this time looking up at them.

Adam sort of hesitates on the bottom step, but Patrick doesn't think Frank notices. Mostly because Frank is walking straight towards him, hand already extended.

"Hey," he says, clasping Adam's own (more hesitantly) outstretched hand and pumping it a few times. "Frank Iero. So you're the kid Patrick's been talking about, huh? He's spoken pretty highly of you."

Adam flushes, Patrick can see it, so he says, "Adam" Then, once Frank is looking at him, he continues. "Adam Jacobson. You'll hear him playing keyboard on the first Last Bastion of Sanity single."

"So in other words, you had a front row seat for all of the shenanigans I heard about?" Frank asks and Adam's still looking a little wide-eyed, but he also nods, says, "Yeah, ha. Yeah, I did."

"And you play keyboard?" Frank asks, eyeing the guitar case that Adam's still holding. "Are you another one of these little musical genius kids who plays, like, eight instruments and sings and shit?"

Adam opens his mouth slightly, then swallows and says, "Nah, no. No, just, uh. Keyboard and bass. And singing, yeah, no."

"Don't forget the occasional cymbal," Patrick says. "He did those for Last Bastion, too. And for the last few weeks he's been helping out on this new age album that Gary's working on. The triangle and chimes and the same fucking chords on the piano over and over again."

"But bass is what I started out on," Adam says, almost defiantly, like he's trying to prove himself to Frank, and Frank maybe sees it too, because he says, grin wide, friendly, "Well that works out well for us, doesn't it?" With that, Frank strums his fingers over his guitar, a sharp riff, and says, "So, should we get started?"

Patrick nods, going over to the corner where his own guitar is propped on its stand, and motions Adam in the direction of the amps, bending down to plug his own guitar in at the same time. For a few minutes, then, it's a cacophony of notes as they all start tuning at the same time—Frank's riffs and slides, to Adam's plucked notes, to Patrick running through a few scales.

Frank, of course, is the first one to stop, to bounce up on the balls of his feet and say, "So?"

Patrick glances at Adam, who nods, then back at Frank, saying, "Well? What are we playing?"

Frank sort of tips his head to the side, bites at his bottom lip, then grins widely, starting in on a *very* familiar refrain, singing "Dance, dance, we're falling apart to half time" completely off-key, and Patrick raises his right hand, scratching his nose with his middle finger. Then, while Frank is still cackling, *he* starts playing, skipping straight to the last chorus, singing, "I'm not okay, I'm not okay, I'm not o-fucking-kay…"

"Fuck you," Frank says, still laughing. Then, "I think you're scarring the kid, Stump. You're probably, like, totally mature and boss-like at the studio, right, and here you are, mocking our breakout hit, and—"

"And what, you weren't mocking ours?"

"Well, yeah," Frank says, "but I'm not the *boss* here, right? I'm allowed, right, AJ?"

And Adam, who had had his mouth open, maybe to jump into the conversation, possibly to defend Patrick—or at least Patrick would like to think so—snaps his mouth shut again. So Patrick rolls his eyes and says, "So, what? We're going to spend the night replaying our greatest hits?"

"Nah," Frank says. "That's boring. I don't know. How about—" Again he starts playing, one of the bigger harder rock songs from the year before, something with a lot of guitar. He plays the intro, one eyebrow raised in a challenge, and Patrick answers by picking up where he leaves off, starting in on the first verse, and Frank's grin turns a little maniacal. He joins Patrick a few stanzas later, and they sort of play at each other, back and forth for a few lines, until they hit the chorus, and then Adam joins them, the notes just a little shy, but when Patrick looks over at him, to nod encouragingly, Adam's smiling at them, just a little.

Frank, however, is grinning more, saying, "Yeah, yeah, come on."

He actually moves away from Patrick and into Adam's space, rather like he used to on stage with Gerard and Ray and Mikey, and Patrick watches Adam, wondering if he'll back up, if this will throw him off, but amazingly enough, he actually starts looking more relaxed, shoulders slumping, fingers moving more confidently over the strings.

Then, *then*, Adam actually takes a step into Frank's space, close enough that their fingers are just inches apart, and when Frank backs up a step, a sort of 'come hither' tease, Adam follows, a few steps, then a few more, before he breaks away and starts playing at Patrick.

Patrick grins, on the verge of losing himself in the music, but before he does, he looks over Adam's shoulder and sees Frank nodding, smiling, mouthing, "Yeah. Fuck, yeah."


	6. Snapshots from a Possible Future [18-22]

18\. The Itch

  
The thing is: Patrick never intended to stop playing.

And, okay, so it's not like he ever *really* stopped—he's pretty sure that at this point in his life, it would be physically impossible for him to do so—but after a decade on the road with his band where he did nothing *but* play, and a brain that, as time went on, increasingly started thinking in arrangements and beats rather than riffs and notes, well.

Well, the amount of time he spent playing for his own enjoyment dwindled, replaced by time spent playing for others, helping the bands he was working with.

The thing is, though, for better or for worse, he's used to it now.

Eight years after coming off the road, he can look at a guitar and not immediately have to pick it up. He can sit down at a piano and play, but he doesn't *have* to. He sings in the shower and in the car, and sometimes, on Saturday mornings, he'll put on his headphones and wander around his house for a few hours, singing along with his iPod at the top of his lungs, but it no longer feels *wrong* if a day goes by and he doesn't sing at least a little.

Which is to say, the next Wednesday, exactly a week after his jam session with Frank and Adam, he doesn't immediately recognize his twitchiness for what it is.

He just thinks he's, you know, twitchy. Having a day where he can't sit still, as he does.

He doesn't even *really* notice it until he's sitting in the sound booth, going over the masters from that morning's recording session with The Flying CBs. Amanda looks over at him, twirling one of her braids around her finger, and she's got her eyes narrowed, too, in a way that Patrick *knows* means she's going to start asking questions at any moment.

Indeed, as soon as Patrick meets her gaze again—for the third time, since he's been spinning his chair back and forth in quarter turns—she says, "Okay, Stump. What the hell?"

He just looks at her.

"You've been tapping out this, I don't know, this *beat* for the last twenty minutes, and you're, like, twitchy as hell. It's like you need a caffeine hit or something, but I know for a *fact* that you've had your coffee today. So again I say, what the hell?"

Patrick looks down at his hand, at his fingers which are, indeed, still tapping, and he stills them, yes, but now that he registers the stillness, he can feel the… almost itch in his fingers, the need to, like, stretch them out or something.

His index finger starts tapping again and Amanda gestures at him with her hand, a *see?* motion, and so Patrick sighs and raises his own hand, rubbing it over his face, down over his nose, mouth.

"Yeah," he says, because, well. Yeah. There's not a whole lot more to say than that.

Except apparently there is, because Amanda says, "So? Why are you so nervous? Do you have some big meeting coming up that I don't know about? Did Jay-Z ask you to do another collaboration? Are we, like, on the short list for some award or something?"

Patrick laughs, because ha, yeah, no. No, this is just a case of him…wanting to stretch his fingers in ways he hasn't needed to in awhile.

He says, "No, I just—"

Amanda's frowning now, but while she likes asking questions, and occasionally she does press, she also (sometimes) lets Patrick get away with saying, "Really, you know, it's nothing. Just, you know, a day."

This is one of those times.

She looks at him for a moment longer, frowning, before turning back to the mixing board.

As she does so, Patrick looks down at his fingers again, sees that they're back to tapping out a beat against the arm of his chair.

*

The thing is: the next day, Patrick still feels like there's an itch at the base of his spine, one that he can't scratch, and it's really fucking annoying. When Pete calls him that night, Patrick tells him about it. He's not looking for sympathy—because sympathy for what?—but he's also not looking to have Pete laugh at him.

Which is what Pete does. Loudly.

"Dude," Pete says. "You should know better, man. You honestly thought that once you started playing again, you'd be able to stop?"

"I'm not *playing* again," Patrick says, because one time down in his basement with Frank and Adam does not constitute playing. It's just—

"Fine," Pete says, "fucking around. You thought that once you started fucking around on the guitar again, you were going to be able to stop." Pete takes a breath, and Patrick opens his mouth to protest this, because it was *one time*, seriously, but Pete isn't done.

"And it's not like it was just a one time thing," Pete continues. "You've been building towards this for months, dude. Like, with that whole thing at Jon's grand opening? And didn't you go play with Spencer once last summer? And with Frank there, you had to know it was just a matter of time before—"

"Before what?" Patrick asks. "Before I joined a new band? I've gone eight fucking years, Pete, without—"

Pete says, "Hey, whoa, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that it *has* been eight years, and so why, when the opportunity to fuck around in your basement with people who you've played with before presents itself, why wouldn't you? I mean, you had fun, right?"

And Patrick says, "Yeah." Because, well. Yeah, he did.

"So why not keep having fun?" Pete asks, and Patrick says, "Um," which Pete seems to take as agreement.

*

But really, Patrick thinks as he walks into the studio after lunch the next day, maybe Pete's right. Why not?

It's not like he actually has time for anything beyond just fucking around and having fun, what with the fact that he spends a good portion of his waking hours in the studio, actually working.

And it was fun. He's had a good time with Frank and Adam.

So, as Pete said, why not?

When the first person he sees after he walks into the building is Adam, he pretty much considers it a sign.

Not that Adam is standing out in the hallway or anything, but he is in one of the practice rooms just off the main hallway, and he's bent over a guitar, playing, but the door is also open, so Patrick feels no compunction about actually interrupting him. He knocks on the door, tapping lightly with his knuckles, and Adam doesn't jerk, doesn't even look startled, as Patrick is pretty sure that he would have a week ago.

"So," Patrick says, leaning against the doorjamb. "We all had a good time last week, right?"

Now Adam looks a little hesitant, but he nods. Patrick watches as he bites at his lip.

"You think you'd want to get together again sometime? I mean, not like a big thing, right, but just, you know, fucking around sometimes. When we feel like playing things besides someone else's next big hit?"

Adam snorts a little, then grins and says, "Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. Just name a time and a place. I'll be there."

It's sort of an unconscious gesture, but Patrick cracks his knuckles, stretching his fingers as he says, "Tomorrow night? I know it's a Saturday and that since you aren't an old man like me, you probably have plans, but—"

Adam rolls his eyes at Patrick's 'old man' comment and says, "Dude, yeah, I'll be there. Same time?"

Patrick nods, says, "See you then," then heads down the hall towards his office. He's already got his phone in his hand, though, and before he gets there, is dialing Frank's number.

Jamia is the one to answer. "The Ragged Nest. How can I help you?"

"Hey," he says, "it's Patrick. I don't suppose Frank is there by any chance?"

"Patrick," Jamia says. "Hi! Yeah, Frank's just in back. Let me get him." She pulls the phone away from her mouth as she shouts, "Frankie! Phone for you!"

Another few seconds pass and Patrick hears the sound of another line being picked up. "Y'ello?" Frank says, and Patrick only has a chance to get out his "Hey," before Frank says, "Patrick! Man! I was totally going to give you a call this evening, about maybe getting together and jamming again sometime. You know, if you have time in your very busy schedule."

"How about tomorrow?" Patrick asks, grinning. "At seven? Adam's already said that would work for him."

Frank laughs. "So apparently great minds think alike?"

"Apparently," Patrick says. Then, because he doesn't want Frank getting any wrong ideas: "It's been awhile since I did something like last week just for fun, you know? No pressure, just a few friends getting together, fucking around for a few hours. You know?"

"Yeah," Frank says. "I know."  


**19\. The Request**

  
Eleven o'clock in the morning, and Patrick is sitting in front of his computer, working on a thirty second segment of the new Ne-Yo song, the transition from the first chorus to the second verse. He's got his headphones on, his fingers are tapping out the beat on the space of desk next to his keyboard, and he's pretty fucking immersed, so that's the reason he starts as badly as he does when Amanda opens the door, comes into the room, and taps him on the shoulder.

He jumps in his seat, says, "Jesus, you scared the fuck out of me," and she takes a step back, raising her hands in a sort of defensive motion, and then she says, "Sorry, sorry. Sorry, but Ryan Ross is on the phone. I told him that you were working right at the moment, but he says it's an emergency."

Patrick arches an eyebrow at that—especially since the last Patrick knew, Ryan was supposed to be down in Texas, doing a tour of Battle of the Band shows, and Patrick can't really see what emergencies would arise there—but he nods and reaches for the phone on the wall, presses the Line 1 button, and says, "This is Patrick."

He's expecting a 'Hello', a 'How are you?' or some other variation on small talk, but instead Ryan says, "Spencer says you and Frank Iero have been jamming together."

Patrick laughs just a little bit and says, "Um." He says, "Yeah, a few times," because they've met four times so far, and they have plans to meet up again this week.

"Like," Ryan says, sounding a little desperate. "Are you calling yourselves a band nowadays?" and Patrick chokes just a little bit, because they really aren't.

He says, "Not like a *band* band, you know. It's pretty much just been me and Frank and Adam, this kid from the studio, fucking around in my basement a few times over the last few weeks."

Patrick wants to continue, say something joking like, 'What, you looking for a new band to sign?' and 'I'm pretty sure that Pete called dibs on any new bands I started, like, back when I was sixteen, so you're going to have duke it out with him' but a) Amanda said it was an emergency, and b) Ryan's sighing in his 'I don't have time for this' way.

"But you're playing?" Ryan asks. "Or, rather, would you be willing to play? Tonight? Spence said he didn't think you'd been playing with a drummer, but I know you and he have played together before and I know he'd be willing to come out and play, if this is something you'd be willing to do."

And Patrick thinks, whoa, hey, whoa, and says, "What? I mean… what?" because seriously, what?

"One of my bands, the Atomic Turtles—remember me telling you about them and their insistence on using the cowbell in every single song, ever?—well, they're headlining a show at the Gateway tonight, and one of their openers, their lead singer had to fly back to Wisconsin last night because his mother ended up in the hospital, and I— I could find someone local to open, I could, I can, but I was talking to Spence, and he suggested I ask you—"

Patrick leans back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, gaze moving over the rows of holes in the acoustic tile, and he blinks a few times, opens his mouth then closes it again, only speaking after Ryan says a hesitant, "So, would you?"

And he wants to say—

Actually, he doesn't know what he wants to say, because he honestly doesn't know what to say. On the one hand, they've just been hanging out in his basement *jamming*, playing *cover songs*, playing off of each other's chords and riffs and if he does this, he knows that he'll spend the next year answering questions about whether this is his new band, why now, why these people, why not a Fall Out Boy reunion, will he be writing songs, will there be a CD, a tour, on and on. And on.

On the other hand, this is Ryan. Patrick's never been very good at telling members of his family no.

He swallows once, takes another breath, then says, "Let me talk to Frank and Adam, okay?"

Ryan breathes out, maybe for the first time in the conversation, and says, "Yeah, okay, yeah. Thank you. I guess just let me know a-sap, right?"

"Yeah," Patrick says. "Will do." Then, "Talk to you soon."

He hangs up, then stares at the phone for a moment, a long moment, before finally standing up and walking over to where his coat is draped over the other chair. He pulls his (turned off) cell phone out of the pocket, turns it on, and sees that he has three messages—all from Ryan, he imagines—but he ignores them in favor of scrolling down to Frank's name in his phonebook.

He pauses for another second, because if he does this, if he asks this, he can't go back, especially if he gets the answer that he doesn't want.

He's not even sure what answer he *does* want.

He presses send.

It rings twice before Frank picks up, saying, "Yo, Stump. Word to your mother." In the back ground, Patrick can hear laughter, Jamia saying, "Babe, why are you--?" but Patrick just says, "Word." Then, before Frank can do more than giggle, says, "So I, um, I have a question for you."

"Shoot," Frank says, and there's the sound of movement through the phone, and Jamia saying, "Display cases aren't meant to be a substitute for chairs, honey."

"I just got a call from Ryan Ross, asking us for a favor," Patrick says. "He seems to want us to open for one of his bands tonight—the real opener had to pull out—and I. Well, I said I'd ask you."

He's expecting an answer something along the lines of 'you did tell him we weren't a real band, didn't you?' Something like that. Instead, Frank says, "Are you serious? Fuck yeah, that'd be— Fuck!" Then, more quietly, obviously talking to his wife, "Yeah, babe, Stump got us a gig tonight!" Then, to Patrick: "Do we need a drummer, though? Or are we just going to go it with the guitars? Acoustic?"

"Ha, no," Patrick says. "Ryan actually said that Spencer—you know, Smith—would be willing to fly out to do drums, if we needed him to. If it was okay with us." He pauses for a moment. "I've played with him a few times."

"Then dude, yeah, totally," Frank says. "But we'll probably need to practice, right? I'm, uh, helping to cover the lunch shift right now, but I can head out, what, 1-ish? So I'd be there around three, a little before? That'll give us enough time, right?"

Patrick nods, then says, "Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, I still need to talk to Adam—"

"Like AJ will say no," Frank says, and Patrick can almost picture him rolling his eyes. "So I'll head out around 1-ish. I'll give you a call when I leave?" and Patrick says, "Yeah, okay. Talk—Um, *see* you soon."

He ends the call, takes a deep breath, then with a last look around his studio room, leaves and goes down the hallway to find Adam.

Gary's got him for the morning again, this time doing work on a folk record, Adam sitting off to the corner of the room, strumming a bass acoustic. Patrick waits until they stop, until the two singers—a man and a woman; husband and wife, if Patrick remembers correctly—start talking with Gary about something, and Patrick pokes his head into the room to say, "Hey, I need to borrow Adam for just a few minutes."

Gary raises an eyebrow at him, but nods, and Adam looks more than a little confused as he follows Patrick out into the hallway. He rocks back on his heels and leans back against the wall as he stares at Patrick, as Patrick says, "So, how would you like to play a show tonight? You, me, Frank, and Spencer Smith, the drummer from Panic! at the Disco?"

Adam's response isn't instantaneous as Patrick is sure Frank thought it would be. He blinks, like Patrick did, then opens and closes his mouth, like Patrick did, but Frank is right, too, because Patrick can see the moment that his eyes fucking *light up*.

"I, yeah," Adam says, and he's no longer leaning against the wall. "Seriously? The four of us? *Yeah.* I mean, *yeah*."

"Okay then," Patrick says, and that, he guesses, answers that.

He feels a little bit of a flutter inside of him as he dials Ryan's number, because—

Because this is something he hasn't done for years, since the last time he, Pete, Joe and Andy walked off of that stage in Chicago.

Because this is something he wasn't sure he'd ever do again, not really.

Because this is something he's not sure he—

Ryan picks up halfway through the first ring, and Patrick says, "Okay, you've got yourself an opener." Ryan's laugher is relieved, and Patrick grins. Thinks, yeah, okay. Yeah.  


**20\. The Pre-Show**

  
A stagehand, just a kid in Patrick's opinion, greets them at the back door of the venue, nodding his head at them, saying, "Mr. Stump, Mr. Ross said you wanted to practice some, which yeah, totally fine. I guess just let us know when you're ready to sound check? Or if you need anything else? We can totally try to get you whatever you need."

Patrick nods his thanks as the kid turns to lead them through the narrow hallways that line the backstage area. It wasn't that long ago he was back here with Spencer and Ryan, meeting up with the Aqua Angels, but he's pretty sure that he hadn't made it this far back into the bowels of the building that time.

Not that the bowels of the building are very deep, because another twenty feet up the hallway, they pass the room the Aqua Angels had been using as their dressing room. The stagehand opens the door next to it, motioning Patrick and Adam in.

"If you want to set your things down, whatever," the kid says, and he's maybe not *such* a kid, because he's probably older than Patrick was when he first started playing venues this size. But he's also calling Patrick, 'Mr. Stump', so.

"Seriously," the kid continues, "if there's anything at all we can do, just let me—or any of us—know."

"Thanks," Patrick says, and then the kid is backing out of the room (closet, more like) and shutting the door behind him. Adam, Patrick sees, is staring at the door wide-eyed, but Adam's been pretty much wide-eyed, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet and fingers twitching, since Patrick hung up with Ryan four hours before.

As Patrick watches now, though, Adam turns from the door and looks at Patrick, then laughs. "Seriously, Mr. Stump," he says quietly, his voice slightly breathy, "if there's anything I can do at *all*--"

"Fuck off," Patrick says, swatting at Adam's arm as Adam ducks out of the way.

A moment later, Patrick hears the sound of a guitar coming from the stage area, and he raises an eyebrow at Adam. "Think Frank beat us here?" he asks and Adam nods even as he shrugs. It takes another moment, but then they hear the sound of a cymbal, too, and Adam says, "I'm guessing Spen—I mean, uh, Spencer Smith?—is here, too?"

"It would figure, wouldn't it," Patrick says, "that we're the ones who fucking live in the city, yet we're the last ones here."

"But only because we had actual work to do," Adam says, and yeah, okay, Adam had gone back to work after the phone call that morning, and Patrick had too, but more often than not, he'd found himself staring off into space, fingers forming chords against the edge of his desk.

"Exactly," Patrick agrees.

He sets down his guitar case, shrugs his coat off, and then picks the case back up, before opening the door out into the hallway again. Adam is only a step behind him.

*

Indeed, they are the last ones there.

Spencer is already behind the drum kit, sticks held loosely in his hand, and he's laughing at Frank, but maybe looking a little bit wary, too, because.

Well, because it's *Frank Iero on stage*.

Patrick totally understands.

"Fuck," Frank says when he sees them coming up side stage, "took you two long enough. Smith and I were starting to think we were going to be putting on a two-man show, possibly without a singer, because ha, yeah."

"Some of us had actual work to do," Patrick says, grinning at Adam, but Frank just shakes his head.

"*I* was working *retail*," Frank says. "I was *making sales*. You were, what? Camped out in front of computers?"

"AJ was contributing to the next big thing in folk," Patrick says, pointing at Adam with his thumb. "The bass line? All him." Then, because Spencer and Adam haven't been formally introduced yet: "Adam, this is Spencer Smith. Spencer, this is Adam Jacobson."

Spencer, still behind his drums, raises a hand, as Frank says, "But we call him AJ. Or kid. Of the two, he seems to prefer AJ. Since he's pretty much just a baby, though—"

"Fuck off, Iero," Adam says, and Spencer's chuckling. He tosses a stick up in the air, then catches it, and says, "So, maybe we should, you know, try to work out a set list?"

Ryan said they had a half an hour to 45-minute block to fill, but seriously, anything they could do. Three songs, four, five? Ryan didn't care, as long as it was something. Anything. Patrick knows they can do that, could probably fill an hour at least, with the overlaps of their knowledge.

"What would you say to seven songs?" Frank asks. "Two of each of ours? Maybe something popular, too? Something that would really fuck with their heads, like when Gerard did that cover of 'Umbrella' on Projekt Rev? That was pretty fucking classic."

"People always like the covers," Spencer says. "Not like this won't be a whole show of covers, but…"

Patrick looks over at Adam to gauge his reaction, because for him, this truly will be an entire show of covers. Adam's sitting on the floor, though, taking his bass out of his case and leaning over to plug it into an amp. Before Patrick can ask his opinion on this plan, though, he starts plucking out the bass line to 'Give 'em Hell, Kid', arching an eyebrow in Frank's direction.

Frank, of course, bursts out laughing, chiming in almost immediately, a beat behind, then *right there* and when they get far enough, he half says-half sings, "You're beautiful."

A few bars later, Frank starts playing extra loud, then switches to the middle of 'The Sharpest Lives', challenging Adam, Patrick knows, but while it takes Patrick a moment to place the song, Adam knows it immediately, switching melodies in mid-chord, following Frank's lead. He misses a bar as he stands up, but then he's back with Frank, and Spencer starts in on a drum line, and Patrick starts mouthing along with what words he can remember, then actually starts singing: "There's a place in the dark where the animals go, you can take off your skin in the cannibal glow—"

And really, Patrick thinks, this doesn't feel any different than it did last week, when it was just the three of them playing in Patrick's basement. Well, better, because of Spencer being there to provide the beat, but still the same vibe. Comfortable, familiar.

Except that then Patrick turns to look out at the empty room—the bar over in the corner, decorated with holiday lights, the empty tables—and he's reminded that this is really, really not his basement. Before he can think too hard about it, though, Frank says, "So, Stump. What do we want to start with? Your stuff? Smith's stuff? My stuff? Britney Spears?"

"Oh baby, baby," Adam sings, completely off key, and Spencer says, to Patrick, "Please tell me he's not another Brendon. Please tell me his iPod isn't filled with, like, the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid."

"No," Adam says, cringing. "No Little Mermaid. Promise."

Frank breathes a mock sigh of relief. "Thank god. I thought we were going to have to have a long talk about appropriate music and inappropriate music, AJ. And also giving advance warning if you're tempted to break out in 'Under The Sea'. Mostly so I can get Bob on the phone first, to torture him." He smirks a little. "Disney seems to bring some very creative curses out of our dear Bob."

Patrick laughs, because he knows this for a fact.

"And maybe we should actually work on getting a set list together," Spencer says, "so that we don't end up doing the Disney revue tonight?"

"Smith, Smith," Frank says. "You're no fun at all. I mean, what would a punk show be without a rousing chorus of 'A Whole New World' or 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight'?"

"It would be no show at all," Adam says, earning a wide grin from Frank, and Patrick's played with the two of them enough times now to know where this is heading—namely, half an hour of Disney Princess choruses, complete with off key yowling and quite possibly creatively inserted swear words.

So, he says, "I think I want to start with one mine, if it would be okay. Just to get my feet wet, you know?"

Spencer nods. "Yeah," he says. "Of course. Were you thinking old or extra old?"

"Or extra super-duper old," Franks says, at which point, Patrick flips him off.

"I was thinking about something kids these days might, you know, actually know."

"So, what," Frank says, "Dance, Dance?" Before Patrick can answer, though, Spencer starts in on the intro-drum work, and by the time Frank chimes in, it seems like the decision has been made.

*

Two hours of practice, the last twenty minutes of which double as sound check, and then they have to vacate the stage so that the Turtles can do what they need to do to prepare for the show.

And wow, Patrick thinks, as he follows Frank off the stage, Adam and Spencer trailing behind, it's been a really fucking long time since he's been in the position of having to leave the stage so that someone *else* can spend as much time as they need to get ready.

So, it's five o'clock, and one of the stagehands is offering to do a dinner run, and the problem is that they still have two and a half hours before they go on stage, and Patrick doesn't really remember how to do this, the waiting.

Not without Pete and Joe and Andy there, anyway. Their entourage. The ever-present video games to while away the hours, the pranks and hijinks that just never seemed to stop. The time he'd spend working his way through his pre-show play list, wandering in circles around the greenroom.

And yeah, so it's not like he's alone backstage or anything. Frank is currently sitting on Adam, and Spencer is talking to Ryan and Patrick's sitting with them, sort of nodding along, but this is, well.

Well, this is not what he's used to, and it's making him feel—

It just feels—

Not wrong, but not *right* either. Probably because his heart is fluttering a little bit in his chest in ways it usually doesn't until about half an hour before he's supposed to go on stage.

In ways that Pete used to distract him out of, and—

And it's not like he doesn't have an hour and a half before he really has to start getting ready, so he twists and reaches for the corner of his couch, where he dropped his jacket earlier, and after a bit of fumbling, he manages to extract his phone from the pocket.

He flips it open, grinning just a little self-consciously at the twin looks that Spencer and Ryan give him, but he just says, "I'm going to go make a call. I'll be back in a few."

"You'd better be," Ryan says, and he looks serious, but his eyes are also crinkled up just a little bit at the edges, like he's laughing. "There's no getting out of this now."

Patrick rolls his eyes, stands up, walks two feet before he has to step over Frank, then finally makes it out into the hallway. He can hear the Turtles doing their sound check, the repetitive "one, two, check, one, two" and he walks a little bit farther into the building, so it's not quite so loud.

Then, *then* Patrick stops, leans back against the wall, flips his phone open and dials.

He's not expecting Pete to answer immediately, because, well, because it's after seven in Chicago, and he's hopefully out eating dinner or something, but what he's not expecting is for Pete's phone to go to voice mail immediately.

He listens to Pete's rambling message (which essentially boils down to "leave me a message, I'll get back to you" except with metaphors and alliteration) then says, "Hey, it's me. Um, I guess you're in a meeting or something, so, um. I, ha, just wanted to tell you that I'm—we're—uh, apparently we're playing a show tonight, putting all of our fucking around in the basement on display for the rest of the world to see. Go us, right? The opener for one of Ryan's groups had a family emergency and Ryan called me up earlier, and I mean, what the hell, right? We're just doing a favor for a friend. It's just for fun. It'll be a lot of fun. And, ha, I'm rambling. Really, though, I just wanted to let you know. So, um. Yeah. I guess I'll talk to you later."

He ends the call, then leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes, staying there until he hears a door open down the hallway, until he looks in that direction and sees Spencer standing there staring at him, one eyebrow raised. Spencer doesn't ask if he's okay, though, or freaking out, or whatever it is they all probably think Patrick's doing out here.

Instead he says, "I thought you might want to know that Frank seems to be making it his mission in life to try to scar the kid. He's talking My Chemical Romance tour stories now, and you *know* what happens once tour stories start getting batted around." Spencer sighs in what might be a put upon manner, except he's grinning, and Patrick can't help but laugh.

"Yeah," Patrick says as he starts back in Spencer's direction. "I'm pretty sure that one day I'm going to live to regret the day I introduced the two of them."

"You aren't!" Frank calls from inside the room, his voice a little bit too giggly for Patrick's comfort. "You're going to thank the Powers That Be for making your life so fucking awesome!"

"Or possibly you should start praying for them to save us all," Spencer says. He takes a quick leap fully out into the hallway, then, and Patrick can only imagine that Frank made some sort of threatening motion in Spencer's direction. Especially when Spencer glares back into the room and says, "Seriously, Iero, I know where you sleep at night. Well, okay, I don't, but I can find out!"

They might have continued on like this, except that at that moment, the sound coming from the stage fades away, and the Atomic Turtles are coming into the hallway. Patrick saw them briefly earlier, but now the lead singer is heading straight for Patrick and Spencer, his hand already out.

"Dude," he says. "Dudes, we totally can't thank you enough for this. Seriously."

There are things for Patrick to say to that, but what the words that come out are, "Hey, it's our pleasure. It'll be fun."

Because it will be.

It will be.  


****

21\. The Show

  
Time speeds up, and what feels like five minutes later, Patrick's standing at the side of the stage with Frank, Spencer, Adam, and Ryan, hidden by the edge of a curtain. The lead singer of the Turtles—Ryan called him Benjamin, but he'd introduced himself as Benji—is standing at the microphone in the center of the stage.

Girls, Patrick hears, are screaming.

Benji is waving his hands at the crowd, urging them to be quiet, saying, "Hi, yeah, yeah, hey, shut up for a few moments, okay?"

That, of course, elicits more screams, and Patrick sees Ryan rolling his eyes, sighing.

"*So*," Benji says loudly, "some of you may have heard that Derek's mother ended up in the hospital last night, so our good friends in Base Jump to Pluto had to pull out of the show tonight."

The crowd, of course, 'awww's their disappointment.

"We're all keeping Derek and his mom in our prayers, though, and we hope you will, too."

More screams.

"But," Benji continues, "we wanted to make sure that you all got your money's worth out of the show tonight, and thanks to our manager, Ryan Ross, we'd like to think that you won't be disappointed. See, kids, life lesson here for you: former rock stars make great managers, because when you have a crisis, they can call in favors from old friends. Keep that in mind!"

Patrick can hear a low murmur start in the room at that—a whispered who, who is it, who do you think it is?

"Let me tell you, you all are in for a treat tonight, because the fact that these guys were even, you know, *hanging out*, much less jamming often enough to come out here and play tonight, well. News to me! And, you know, some of these guys were seriously my fucking idols when I was growing up, so this is a pretty big deal for me, too. And who knows, this might very well be a once in a lifetime collaboration performance tonight, so get your cell phones out and ready to record, all right, since who knows if you'll ever have a chance to see this again.

"Now, since I'm pretty sure that they won't need any introductions once they get on stage, I'll just exit stage right here, and let the show go on. Enjoy the fuck out of this, guys and gals, because I know I will be."

More screams, slightly confused, but true to his word, Benji exits stage right, the lights go down, and that, Patrick knows, is their cue to enter.

They do, Adam first, then Patrick, Spencer breaking off to get to the drum set at the back of the stage, Frank picking up his guitar and running his fingers over it in a quick riff. There are more screams—maybe anticipation, maybe because it's just the thing to do—and then Spencer starts in on the quick intro beat to Dance, Dance.

Patrick's pretty sure he hears a few "oh my god, oh my god!"s and a steady increase in the screams, especially when the bass kicks in five seconds in. The lights don't actually go up until ten seconds in, a spotlight going right to Patrick's face as he starts singing. "She says she's no good with words, but I'm worse." *That's* when the screams really start in, when the camera flashes start going off, bright bursts of white in the darkness.

It takes a moment before people start to register that it's not actually Fall Out Boy on the stage, though; Patrick can tell the moment it happens, because one moment there are screams of "Patrick!" and the next, "Frank!" and "Oh my god, Spencer!" and halfway through the first verse, Patrick turns to look at Frank, catches him grinning widely in Patrick's direction.

No matter that this is probably the least prepared that Patrick has ever been for a show since he was fifteen—simply due to the amount of time he *had* to prepare—this will not be something that Patrick ever forgets how to do, but at the same time, it takes him about two verses to truly get into his old groove, to remember exactly what those stage lights are like, how it sounds to have Spencer's drum beats being filtered into one ear, Adam's bass and Frank's guitar into his other.

He can tell the moment that it truly starts clicking, though, because that's when Frank starts stalking across the stage towards him, and Adam starts doing the same on the other side, and while Patrick has a momentary worry about ending up as a sandwich between the two of them—he heard some of the stories Frank was regaling Adam with earlier—they end up meeting just to his right, playing their guitars at each other, fingers only inches a part.

More screams.

They've switched sides by the time the song ends, by the time Frank steps up to the microphone on the left side of the stage and says, "Hello, LA!"

What feels like about half the room shouts 'hello' back.

"So I know that some of you all probably going, who the fuck are these guys? And why are they playing songs from, like, a decade ago? So I figure, despite Benji's earlier claims, we should probably introduce ourselves. First up, we have our illustrious lead singer. Patrick Stump, ladies and gents. You should savor this moment, as he's rarely seen out of his natural habitat these days, which is in his studio, behind a mixing board."

Frank smiles widely enough at Patrick that his nose crinkles up.

"Then, on drums, we have the really fucking talented Spencer Smith. You might remember him from a little band called Panic! at the Disco. Yes? Good. On bass—and you probably don't know his name yet, but that's going to change really fucking soon—we have our good friend Adam Jacobson, better known as AJ. And me, I'm Frank Iero, from the band My Chemical Romance.

"Now, you're probably going, um, you all were in different bands, what the fuck are you doing on stage together playing Fall Out Boy songs? Well never fear, we will also be playing MCR and Panic! songs. And as for why we're sharing a stage? Musicians and boredom don't really mix very well, so. You know how it goes. And that, I think, is enough talking from me, especially since I'm suddenly appreciating the ease of Gerard's stage banter, because this is really fucking intimidating, you know? So save me, Spencer Smith, and count us into the next song."

Spencer does, with Frank and Adam joining him immediately on the count of four, and Patrick knew, earlier, that he wasn't going to get out of singing 'I Write Sins' but he was surprised when Frank suggested 'Time To Dance' as one that he thought it would be fun to play.

Now, watching him, he's pretty sure it's because Frank realized he could do his best imitation of a kangaroo to this song, bouncing up and down, all the way to Patrick, around Patrick, leaning back against Patrick as he plays. He's head banging, more than the song possibly warrants, but Adam is curved around his guitar on Patrick's other side, and Patrick agrees it's a fun song to sing.

Of course, if he thinks that Frank's going all out on 'Time to Dance', well, it's nothing compared to the moment that Spencer and Frank start in on the intro to 'The Black Parade'. Frank stands completely still for a moment, facing Spencer as he starts picking out the introductory melody, and then he turns towards Patrick, nodding his head, and Patrick starts in on the first line, "When I was a young boy, my father took me into the city, to see a marching band."

Frank's wandering the stage now, between Patrick and Adam, who's providing backup vocals, then back to Spencer, finally climbing up onto one of the smaller amps that are lining the edge of the stage, and on the first line of the instrumental interlude, Frank jumps off of the amp, lands with a chord that is remarkably on key, and then lets his fingers fucking fly.

Pete and Joe could be maniacs on stage, Patrick remembers, but Frank can go completely out of control, spinning, kicking, taking out anything in his path, and so during final drum solo at the end, Patrick stalks over to where Frank is standing, and leans his forehead on Frank's shoulder, just like Pete used to do to him all the time, and so, for a few moments at least, Frank actually stands still.

There's barely a breath of space after the drums finish, though, before Frank segues into 'I'm Not Okay', and the intro is long enough that Patrick not only has time to make it back to his mic, but also to let himself go for a few chords, banging his head along with the beat. He starts in on the first verse, with what feels like the entire auditorium screaming the words along with him, and his blood is really and truly pumping now.

This, he didn't think he'd forgotten, but he had.

Behind him, he feels Frank making his way back across the stage to play at Spencer, and when Patrick turns to look at Adam, to see how the kid is holding up, he sees that he's pretty much rocking the fuck out, too. He catches Patrick looking and grins widely, tossing his head to get his bangs out of his eyes. Then he makes his way across the stage to Patrick and before Patrick really registers what's going on, Adam leans back into his space, sort of like Joe used to do, and they end up playing back to back for several seconds.

Frank is back in front of a mic for the "trust me" part, and then Patrick's singing the "I'm not o-fucking-kay" part, and then they're winding up, four songs down, three to go, and they actually let the guitars go silent for a second before Patrick starts picking out the melody to 'I Write Sins'. That, at least, is familiar, a song that he has played in concert before, but never with Frank at his side, pushing the beat faster, faster, or Spencer at his back, pounding at his drums as hard as he can, comfortable in his own territory.

Five songs down, and before they start in on song number six—a pop ballad from the year before by Kylie Aspen, a staple on MTV *still*—Patrick walks back to where Spencer is, picking up his water bottle from beside an amp and taking a swig. Spencer's breathing heavily, too, bangs falling into his eyes, but his eyes are bright and wide. Patrick nods at him once, then lets Spencer take over, pounding out the beat. It's a punk take on the song, with more head banging than cotton candy pop should probably ever really have, but it made them laugh when they were practicing, when Frank inserted this totally fucking awesome guitar riff, and Adam attempted to do a jump with splits, and they're laughing now, too. This time, though, the crowd is singing along.

Then—and this feels wrong, just a little, because Patrick pretty much hasn't ended a show with anything but 'Saturday' since Pete handed him the lyrics—they segue into 'This Ain't a Scene', because the thing they all agreed on was that they wanted this show to be as high energy as possible, especially since they were going to be playing such a short set. No need for ballads to give them a bit of a breather.

So, Patrick starts in on the melody, and by the time he starts singing—"I am an arms dealer"—Frank and Adam are at their mics to chime in with back up vocals. They also seem to be channeling Pete and Joe, because instead of the hopping around that Frank had been doing earlier, they're spinning in tight circles, twin flashes of movement out of the corners of Patrick's eyes.

The crowd knows this one, too, shouting the words along with Patrick, stamping their feet along with the repetitions of "goddamn arms race" and Patrick is pretty much lost in the song, feeling his fingers moving over the strings on his guitar, the long familiar words leaving his mouth, and then, suddenly it's over, their half an hour up, and, as he looks at Frank standing to one side, Adam to the other, both of them grinning, panting, he thinks, too soon.

Too soon.

"Thank you, ladies and gents," Frank says then, panting, into his mic. "We hope you enjoy the rest of the show."  


**22\. The Dressing Room**

  
Afterwards—

Afterwards, Patrick feels more than a little bit like he's suffering from a sense of déjà vu. Fifteen years ago, he was stumbling down hallways just like this one, Pete and Joe and Andy at his back (or front), all of them sweaty, laughing, congratulating each other on how fucking awesome they were, seriously, dudes, fuck, we're going straight to the fucking top!

This time, though, it's Frank with his hands on Patrick's shoulders, pushing him down the hallway. Adam and Spencer are following behind, with Ryan, all of them panting, smiling, talking, but about what, Patrick can't hear over Frank's giggles in his ear.

He knows how this part of the routine goes, though: all of them piling into the closet of the dressing room, wiping faces with towels, guzzling bottles of water and beer, all of them too wound up to sit still, and fuck, Patrick's missed this, he realizes now, the adrenaline rush from being up on that stage, closing his eyes and letting himself go, in ways he otherwise can't, hasn't been able to for years, at all.

This isn't how it usually goes, though, because *usually* it's the rest of his guys there with him: Pete standing in the middle of the room, jumping on Andy's back, talking with Joe about his grand plans for the What Next. But Pete—none of them are here tonight, and as far as Patrick knows, there isn't going to be a What Next, not again, not anything beyond his basement, and—

And this is why he's surprised when, just a moment after he opens the door to their dressing room, he's wrapped in a tight hug. A moment later, Pete's face is pressed against his neck, his arms wrapped tightly around Patrick's shoulders, and then they just stand there for a long moment. Until, that is, Pete pulls back and slaps at the back of Patrick's head with the flat of his hand and says, "What the fuck, Stump?"

Before Patrick can respond, Pete slings an arm over his shoulder, dragging him further into the (very small) room, towards the ratty green couch. "Seriously, what the fuck?" Pete says again. "I had to hear about your gig from *Ross*, dude. What the hell?"

When Patrick glances over towards the doorway, where Ryan and Spencer are standing, he sees that Ryan's ducking his head. Patrick catches his eye, though, and Ryan grins, maybe just a little self-consciously.

"I called," Patrick says, because he did, just—

"And left a *voice mail*, while I was already in the fucking *air*. Seriously, you would have made me troll the Internet for footage of your first show in God, how many years? Patrick fucking Stump, sometimes I don't know what the fuck to do with you."

Pete's standing in front of Patrick now, arms crossed over his chest, foot tapping on the floor, but he's also grinning really fucking widely, too happy in the moment to really be as pissed as he's purporting to be.

Patrick says, "I just, you know. Didn't think it was a really big deal. Just a favor for a friend."

"Fuck that," Frank says, and when Patrick looks over, he's got his arm wrapped around Adam's neck, and he almost looks like he's going to start giving the kid a noogie at any moment. "Our first show, man! Of course it's a big fucking deal!"

"Exactly," Pete says. "Fucking huge. Hell, I bet it's big enough that right now, someone out there is on the phone to Rolling Stone, telling them about this fucking awesome meeting of the bands, and they're fucking kicking themselves for not having anyone out to cover this—" He pauses, looks at Ryan. "Dude, what's the name of this band again?"

"The Atomic Turtles," Spencer says, smirking, just a little, as he jabs Ryan in the side with his elbow. Ryan says, "Shut up."

"They had an unhealthy obsession with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when they were growing up," Spencer continues, ignoring Ryan. "That's the story I'm choosing to believe, anyway. Even if it doesn't explain the cowbells."

"I actually may have to go watch part of their set," Frank says, "to see if they really do use a cowbell in every song." Then, to Pete: "Ross promised me they did, which is just fucking awesome. I've decided that if I ever record another record, it's totally going to have a cowbell solo on it. Just wait and see."

Now Adam is asking, "Cowbells?" and Patrick is turning back to Pete, who's standing there smiling at him, them. After a moment of just looking, Pete takes a step forward again, around to Patrick's side, and leans his chin on Patrick's shoulder, saying, "Hi."

"Hi," Patrick says, and he leans just a bit into Pete, because this is—

This is—

"I'm glad you were able to make it," Patrick says.

"No thanks to you," Pete says softly, and Patrick can feel him swallow against Patrick's shoulder.

On the other side of the room, Frank is telling Adam something about cowbells, possibly doing an imitation of one from the way Ryan and Spencer are rolling their eyes in unison. Adam's laughing, almost giggling, and Patrick nods.

"Ha, yeah," he says. "No thanks to me."

In response, Pete just wraps his arms around Patrick and squeezes him tight.  



	7. Snapshots from a Possible Future [23-31]

**23\. The Morning After**

  
The thing is: it actually turns out not to be that big of a deal at all.

No phone calls the next morning, waking Patrick from his much-deserved sleep. No reporters camped out on his front lawn, wanting an exclusive on, as Pete declares it, the biggest thing to hit the music scene in fucking *years*.

No, the most Patrick gets is a phone call around noon from Joe, where he says things like, "Dude," and "You totally thought you could stay away, didn't you?" before cackling loudly enough in Patrick's ear for long enough that Patrick hangs up on him.

Patrick is fine with this. He prefers this, actually, because while it might have seemed like a big fucking deal to the four of them the night before, to Pete and Ryan and Benji, well. It was fun. It was a one-time thing. It was a favor to a friend.

Nothing more.

*

Pete, though, has an entirely different outlook on the whole matter.

Because when Patrick wakes up the next morning—at nine, still too short on sleep, given that they'd gone out after the show with the Turtles and their crew, and hadn't made it back to Patrick's place until after three—he finds that Pete has moved from the guest room to the couch, that he's got his laptop open and propped up on his knees, and that he's typing frantically.

Never a good sign.

Especially when Patrick sees the familiar background color of Pete's preferred blog of the moment. *Especially* when Pete turns to look over his shoulder at Patrick when he comes into the living room and grins widely at him. Maybe even a little maniacally. He doesn't even try to hide the screen when Patrick glances at it, so Patrick is able to see black boxes of embedded video, and because Pete is no one if not Pete, he pushes play just a moment later, and Patrick hears his voice, tinny through computer speakers, but definitely him.

He says, "Jesus, Pete," but Pete just grins more widely than before.

"The whole concert's already made it onto YouTube," Pete says, but he doesn't follow it up with any talk of how it's already the most popular of the day, or how it's had 10,000 views in the last 3 hours, or something like that, so Patrick counts it as a plus.

"And you're feeling the need to point it out to the world?" Patrick asks, and Pete nods.

"Got to make them jealous!" he says. Indeed, when Patrick rests his elbows on the couch so that he can peer over Pete's shoulder, he reads: *Flew to la ysterday. saw a showby my new fav band. you should 've been there. howmany fam faces do you see??*

"Jesus, Pete," Patrick says again, but it's fond, exasperated.

*

It's less fond an hour later, when Pete's talking albums, whether Patrick's started writing his new group any songs, and has Patrick considered a tour. They could take a month, right? They could do the West Coast for sure, if they couldn't be away for a whole four weeks. Also, in case Patrick's forgotten, Pete has a label. Right here! Waiting to cater to Patrick's every whim!

"*Pete*," Patrick says, and there's a bite to it. More than he wants, but it gets Pete to shut up. Because Pete doesn't seem to understand: there is a difference between Patrick jamming in his basement with other musicians and Patrick starting up a new band.

Pete actually looks hurt, and he sounds it, too, when he says, "You shouldn't be cooped up in the studio all day, Stump. You weren't meant to live the rest of your life behind the soundboard."

"Except that that's what I'm doing now," Patrick says. "Except that it's what I *want* to be doing."

Because it is, has been, from the time he was still out on the road being a lead singer. Since he started sitting in the back of tour busses, messing around on Garage Band. Since people started asking him to do arrangements, create beats, be the driving force behind the music, and that's the rush now, putting his stamp on it, making the notes fit the vision in his head.

That's who he is now.

"But you miss it," Pete says, and Patrick sighs, because yes, yes, the night before he'd remembered the rush of being up on stage, the audience spread out in front of him, singing along, feeding the energy, the playing. He'd had fun. But.

But he's co-owner of a studio now. He has a full slate of artists lined up to work with him, stretching into the summer. Frank and Jamia have their store, Spencer doesn't even call Los Angeles home, and Adam—some band is going to lure Adam out of the studio before very much longer, if Patrick's any judge. And he likes to think that he is.

"But we aren't a band," Patrick says. "Not in the way that you're defining band, anyway. We're guys who played together once, who will probably get together in my basement again next week, and maybe Spencer will join us when he's out here. But that's it, Pete. That's all we're ever going to be."

Pete just looks at him and sighs.  


  
****

24\. The Welcome

  
So. Patrick doesn't really consider Ryan to be much of a pool party sort of guy. When Patrick thinks of Ryan and parties in the same sentence, he thinks of suits, of formal dining tables with more silverware at each place setting than Patrick knows what to do with. He thinks of top hats and bowties and china with gilt edges.

The party invitation that arrives in Patrick's mailbox the second week of January, though, reads:

_Join Us!  
When: Saturday, 2 o'clock!  
Where: The Ross Backyard &amp; Pool!  
Why: To welcome our friend Spencer to LA!_

  
Off to the side, Keltie's written in her bubbly scrawl: _Bring a suit, if you'd like!_ and Patrick thinks, only in LA. Only in LA, where it's been known to be 80 degrees on Christmas, would anyone think it was a good idea to throw a pool party in *January*.

Patrick RSVPs, saying he'll be there, but when he goes he does not bring his swimsuit.

Instead, he brings himself, a cake from the bakery that Amanda swears by, and a bottle of relatively good wine, because, as Amanda said, "This is a Ryan Ross party, Stump. You know better than to go empty handed."

And it is a Ryan Ross party, which is why Patrick's not surprised to see that the street that Ryan and Keltie live on is already lined with cars. When he opens his car door and steps outside, he can hear the sounds of a party in full swing: screeches and splashing water, laughter, music turned up loud.

Patrick doesn't know the kid who answers the door when he knocks—a member of one of Ryan's bands, he's sure, because once Ryan signs them, they pretty much get adopted into the Ross-Colleen family. The kid recognizes Patrick, though, because he grins brightly and says, "Patrick fucking Stump, man. Dude."

If Pete was there with Patrick, Patrick thinks, he'd either a) say a snide '*dude*' in reply, or b) he'd say something like, '*dude*, I know, right?' and twenty minutes later, he and the kid would be chatting like they'd known each other for years.

Patrick, though, just says, "Hi."

Then, "Have any idea where I can put these?" to which the kid gestures in the direction of the backyard, straight through the house. There are quite a few people hanging out in the living room, in the kitchen, by the bar in the sunroom at the back of the house. There are more in the garden, though, and Patrick's barely three steps out the door when Keltie calls out, "Patrick! You made it!"

She's by the grill, an apron on over her bikini top and wrap skirt. She's got a beer in one hand, a pair of tongs in the other, and when Patrick gets close enough, she says, "There are, what, forty guys here? And yet I don't trust a single one of them within 10 feet of my grill." With that, she leans over and kisses Patrick on the cheek, before motioning Patrick to put his contributions down on a nearby table.

"Our grill," Ryan says, coming over to where they're standing, and Keltie hangs the tongs over the handle of the grill so that she can pat his head. "If you say so, honey," she says, and then, when Ryan's looking at Patrick, she shakes her head, points to herself, and mouths, "Mine."

Patrick doesn't manage to hide his smile, but Ryan doesn't notice because he's saying, "Patrick, man, we're glad you could escape from the studio long enough to actually come out today."

"It's good for me to see the sun every once in a while, you know?" Patrick says. "So I don't fade away to nothing." He laughs a little. "Pete swears it's going to happen one of these days, if I'm not careful."

As Patrick's talking, Keltie's pointing at Ryan, who's wearing sunglasses and long sleeves—although it *is* a t-shirt—mouthing, "Him too! Him too!" but this time Ryan catches her at it, and Patrick can only see half the eye roll, but there's no way for him to miss Ryan's smile as he leans down to give Keltie a kiss.

"Are you sure you want to be doing that in front of the kids?" Spencer asks, and Patrick starts, because he hadn't heard Spencer approach. He's got on sunglasses, too, a mixed drink with a little red straw in his hand, and he grins widely when Ryan, still kissing Keltie, flips him off.

A few of the boys and girls in Ryan's bands must hear Spencer's comment, because the next thing Patrick knows, he's surrounded by wolf whistles and people saying, "My eyes, my eyes!" Ryan pulls back far enough to lean his head on Keltie's shoulder for a moment before he straightens his own, then smiles widely at everyone who's now staring at them. He shoots a pointed, steady look at Spencer, one which makes Spencer laugh—Patrick's pretty sure that even though it's hidden behind tinted lenses, it translates to something like, 'I hate you, and also? I know where you sleep at night.'

Keltie just shakes her head and says, "Boys," before turning her attention back to the grill.

"What Spencer meant to say," Ryan says, "Is 'Hi Patrick. So glad to see you at this party that my best friend Ryan is so kindly throwing for me.'"

"Hi Patrick," Spencer parrots, "so glad you could come to this pool party my best friend Ryan decided to throw in my honor, even though it's *January* and I'm only going to be here for *three weeks*."

"Not if Ryan has anything to say about it," Keltie says with a sing-song lilt, not turning away from the grill, and Patrick's reminded, suddenly, of his conversation with Brendon back in Vegas: how sure Brendon was that Ryan was going to try to lure Spencer out of Vegas for good. Brendon, he thinks, might not have been delusional.

Spencer just shakes his head, though, and sips at his drink. "Three weeks," he says to Patrick. "Just until Sweet Midori hits the road. Then—"

"We'll see," Ryan interrupts. "Because three weeks is a long time, you know. Anything could happen in three weeks."

This time Spencer sighs, and he might have responded, except that some of Ryan's kids—the drummer and guitarist-slash-cowbell player for the Turtles—have been edging closer to the grill—possibly wanting food, Patrick thinks, but probably for a more nefarious purpose, as Ryan suddenly stands up straight and starts shaking his head.

"Nuh-uh," he says. "If you even think about it, I'm tearing up your contract. I will take away the fucking cowbell, I swear to god."

As Patrick watches, Ryan starts backing away from the grill. Unfortunately, he's also backing in the direction of the pool. This, Patrick is pretty sure, will not end well, but he also knows better than to stick his nose into pool fights lest he end up in the deep end, too.

So, when Spencer turns to him and says, "Keltie will give them a new one, don't worry," Patrick nods along, saying, "I don't know what would be more tragic, the lost contract or the lost cowbell."

Before Spencer can reply, three things happen in quick succession: Ryan shouts, there's a loud splash from the pool, and pretty much everyone in the backyard starts cheering.

As Keltie passes them by on her way to the pool, presumably to help Ryan out—or maybe, Patrick thinks, to join him—she says, "It's tradition now. The first time, he was wearing a silk shirt, but he's learned."

"He told me about that," Spencer says to Patrick. "He was fucking *pissed*. But he managed to drag the two offenders into the pool with him, and one had on fucking, like, leather or something, so he felt that his revenge was complete."

"Oh, god," Patrick says, because he knows how that goes: years spent on the road with Pete and Joe, even Andy. Dirty. Hundreds of tour mates. He knows about pranks, about revenge.

"I know, right?" Spencer says, and somehow that turns into the two of them sitting at a table, having a conversation about past prank wars, and some of Ryan's kids gather around to listen to the stories, sometimes throwing in their own, which turns into a game of 'do you remember when', which turns into Patrick and Spencer sitting at a table, talking about the apartment Spencer's renting ("Seriously fucking bland.") and the kid he's out here to help ("He just needs to learn to stop thinking, you know? Just let himself go."), which eventually leads to Spencer saying, "So, are you and Frank and that kid still jamming together?"

Patrick nods. After Ryan's show, there had been a few weeks where they'd stopped, what with the holidays and all, but they'd gotten together the week before, and Patrick doesn't really want to admit how good it'd felt to spend two hours fucking around in his basement again, playing, singing.

"Do you think you'd feel like joining us sometime, you think?" Patrick asks, raising an eyebrow, in case Spencer's question was intended to be a not-so-subtle hint.

Spencer ducks his head just a little bit, which tells Patrick that maybe it had been, but his grin is also wide, unashamed. "Sometime, yeah," he says. "Absolutely."

"Okay then," Patrick says, raising his drink to Spencer in a mock-toast. "Okay."

  


  
****

25\. The Way It Goes

  
Spencer shows up on Patrick's doorstep about fifteen minutes early, but Patrick's not surprised; it is Spencer, after all. It's raining out, just like it has been for the past two days, sheets of it coming down, turning Patrick's driveway into something of a river. Spencer's sort of buried in a hoodie, cloth already damp-dark, a few pairs of drumsticks wrapped in a plastic bag clutched in his hand.

"We did just see each other at a pool party at Ryan's on Saturday, right?" Spencer asks. "It wasn't my imagination that it was, you know, 75 and sunny?"

"Welcome to California," Patrick says, "land of fucked up weather."

Earlier, on the news, they'd talked about the three feet of new snow in the mountains, the skiers ecstatic, the flood watch along the Russian River, up in northern California, and about how down south, in San Diego, it was sunny and they were recording record highs for this day in January.

"Tell me about it," Spencer says. He wipes his feet on the mat inside Patrick's door, then peels open the plastic bag, pulling his sticks out. He twirls them in his fingers once, then stills them again. "So, show me your set-up?"

His reaction to Patrick's basement—the blocks of color, the paint splattered walls—is a little comical: eyes wide, a bitten off laugh. He says. "Don't show Brendon, okay? He'll decide he wants to do his whole condo this way, and somehow, I think that I'd be first on his list of people to call up for help."

"That's what Frank said about Gerard," Patrick says. "Well, how if he ever saw it, he and Lyn-Z would probably, like, do their dining room in, like, fucking red and black or something."

"*That* I can see."

Spencer laughs and walks across the room to Patrick's drum kit and nods approvingly before sliding onto the stool. He raises an eyebrow in Patrick's direction as he gets settled, an unspoken, 'can I?' and when Patrick nods, he starts adjusting the kit to fit him—raising the cymbals, pushing the snares a little farther out. He's just started to test them out when the doorbell rings—loud enough that Spencer starts, bringing his drumstick down on a cymbal louder than he'd apparently intended, since he says, "Fuck. That thing's about a hundred times worse on this side, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Patrick says. "It is."

He heads back upstairs, only to find both Frank and Adam standing on his doorstep. Adam's got an umbrella clutched in his hand, but Frank's hair is plastered to his face, water dripping down his cheeks, and as soon as he sees Patrick, he shakes his head, spraying water everywhere.

"Hey! Fuck!" Adam says, holding his umbrella up between the two of them, but Frank just grins in an ingratiating manner and Patrick lets them into the house. Patrick can hear Spencer testing out the drums in the basement, and Frank says, "So, we've got company tonight? How long is he here for? Three weeks?"

"Two and a half now," Patrick says. "Or so he claims. I'd put money on Ryan cooking up some way to get him to stick around for longer, though."

"Because Ross is a sneaky little fuck like that," Frank says. "He's probably figured out 20 ways to make sure that Spencer never leaves again!" He's already heading for the stairs, Adam right behind, so Patrick follows them down and watches as Spencer looks up from the kit. He stops playing after a moment, rolling his shoulders, stretching his muscles, then half-stands when Frank approaches him, reaching out to slap the hand Frank extends in his direction.

"So you decided you wanted to throw your lot in with us for a few weeks?" Frank asks as he and Adam kneel down to pull out their instruments. "I'd have thought that you'd be ready to get away from the drums after spending all day, what, helping some kid get ready for his tour?"

"Or maybe I'm in need of some grownup time," Spencer says, his grin toothy, his shoulders shaking just a bit with suppressed laughter. "Maybe I wanted to play with people over the age of 20."

"Actual age or mental age?" Adam asks, and when all of them turn to look at him, he looks a little startled that he actually said that out loud. He pushes gamely on, though. "Because if you're going for mental, you're in the wrong place. Because Frank is, you know, maybe twelve, *maybe*—"

At which point Frank half tackles him, laughing and saying, "Hey, fuck you, you infant. Don't you know by now that you need to respect your elders?" before shooting a grin in Patrick's direction that looks really fucking proud.

"Yeah." Spencer sighs. "I can see that. So let's go with actual age."

He plays a quick drum roll, which Patrick takes to be a sign that he'd like to get this evening going, please. Patrick obliges by picking up his guitar, settling the strap over his shoulder. In the next moment, it's a race between Frank and Adam to see who can get plugged in next. Frank wins by a riff, but Adam is just behind him, and then they're both looking at Patrick expectantly.

And Patrick, well.

Suddenly, Patrick's not quite sure what to do, because these jam sessions that they've been doing… they've been hours filled with top 40 hits, 80s power ballads, anthems from their childhoods, theme nights and scream-o takes on sappy love songs. Basically: it's been a few months of fun.

Having Spencer here, though, somehow makes it feel more official. Like it's an actual band practice, with a purpose. Which it's not—it's nothing more than it was the week before, or three weeks before that, but.

But Spencer starts tapping out a steady beat against the edge of his snare with his stick, and he says, "So how does this go?"

Frank glances at Patrick before he says, "However the fuck we want it to. What are you all in the mood for tonight? Eighties? Disco? TRL this week?" Patrick shrugs, but Spencer nods and says, "You all know that new Carbon Dated 10,000 BC song? The one that goes like—" He starts tapping out a beat, and it's something that Patrick recognizes, but isn't overly familiar with.

Adam nods, though, and starts picking out the bass line, and that's enough for Patrick to start in on a melody—right or not, it doesn't really matter, because Frank's joining him, head bent forward to stare at his fingers, like he does every week.

Like it's not different at all.

And maybe, Patrick thinks as he plays, it isn't.

  


  
****

26\. The Question

  
It begins, as most things seem to nowadays, with a knock on Patrick's door.

Well, a knock, then the doorbell, button pushed once, twice, three times, and when Patrick actually gets the door open, he's halfway through saying, "Fucking *hell*, Iero," before he realizes that Frank isn't the only one standing on the step. Adam's just getting out of his car, but Spencer's right next to Frank, laughing. Possibly with Frank, possibly at him, since Frank is looking far, *far* too innocent, a fact which is only accentuated by the way that he's pointing at Spencer and saying, "Yeah, fucking hell, *Smith*. You know how fucking loud that doorbell is."

"Uh huh," Spencer says, his voice dry, totally failing to rise to Frank's bait. "It was all me. I admit it. My fingers just get a little trigger happy. You know how it goes."

Frank nods his agreement, then as Adam finally reaches them, slings his arm over Adam's shoulders, saying, "Totally true, right, kid? You know how it goes?" and Adam looks at Patrick with a wide, totally confused look before saying, "Sure?"

"Oh, sure," Spencer says, "take Frank's side. Of course."

Which is why Adam's looking back and forth between Spencer and Frank (and Patrick, too), probably trying to figure out if he should try to work his way out of whatever corner he's backed himself into, when Patrick finally lets them into the house.

"He knows whose good side he needs to stay on," Frank says, and Spencer says, "Yeah. Mine."

And somehow, see, conversations like this are becoming a normal part of Patrick's life, because they're in week two of this arrangement, jam session three, and Patrick's already settling into a routine. Today he actually started checking the clock at four, and he'd watched the second hand jump forward 23 times before Amanda tweaked the bill of his hat and said, "So I'm guessing you have somewhere better to be?"

Patrick shook his head, of course, and turned back to his work, but not ten minutes later he found himself looking up at the clock again.

It's just because Patrick's having a good time with it, is all. It's just because it's something *different*, is all.

Pete calls what they're doing 'practice'--as in, "You got practice tomorrow night, Stump?"--but the thing is, it's not. Yeah, they played one show and yeah, Spencer being there to provide rhythm makes it feel a little more "official", but they're still just four guys getting together to jam. They aren't working *towards* anything.

Except: tonight, when they're wrapping everything up, Frank says, "How much longer are you going to be here, Smith?"

Spencer laughs. "You've been talking to Ryan, haven't you?" At Frank's look--confused, but willing to play along--Spencer continues. "He's been working hard to get me to stick around. Just this week I got three calls from managers whose kids would like some extra help before they go into the studio or out on the road, and another fucking, like, five from the kids themselves. And it's all, 'Oh, we heard you were in town.' 'Oh, do you think you'd have time to help little Johnny?' It has Ryan's fingerprints all over it."

"Fucking Ross," Frank says, but he's grinning now in a way that Patrick has come to know means that he's secretly pleased.

"Fucking Ross," Spencer agrees. Then: "Why?"

Frank closes his guitar case, then sits back on his heels and says, "So Greg. You know, the kid on my bowling team? Well, he's apparently the president of his little geology honors society, and they're doing their annual fundraiser for the preservation of, well, someplace with a lot of rocks, and because someone years and years ago thought it would be clever to have a rock concert for the rocks—I know, right?—well. That's what they're doing. Usually it's local bands—campus, some smaller ones down from LA--but Greg asked me if we might consider dropping by, too. For some reason, he thinks we might be a draw."

He shakes his head, as if this is an absurd thought, but his shoulders are shaking and he sounds pleased. Adam is grinning almost helplessly, looking excited in that way that Patrick remembers being once upon a time.

"I told him I thought we might be down a drummer," Frank says, "but if Ross has got you sticking around...?"

Spencer snorts and shakes his head, scrubbing fingers through his hair. "When?" he asks, finally looking up.

"Two weeks," Frank says. "They're going to have a stage in the center of the fucking UC Riverside quad, and supposedly bands get, like, three or four songs, but Greg said we could have as much time as we wanted." He raises his voice, until it's a little squeaky. "Seriously, dude. Whatever you want."

Adam, Patrick sees, is holding himself carefully still--like he doesn't want to agree if the rest of them aren't going to, or disagree if the rest of them want to. Spencer is tapping his stick against his thigh, obviously thinking, and then he looks at Patrick, like this is his choice, and Patrick's first thought is, *no-yes-no*.

Because last time, see, it was a favor for a friend. Except this time it would be, too. Just. Frank's friend, not Patrick's. And now that Patrick thinks about it, *really* this is just as much Frank's thing as it is Patrick's—maybe even more so, since it was initially Frank's idea to get together in the first place—and since Frank did Patrick's thing, Patrick doesn't really have the *right* to say no.

Plus, it *is* for charity. Patrick tries not to say no to charity very often.

So, after a long look at Frank, who's just sitting there looking hopeful, he says, "Hey, why the fuck not?" He feels a moment of panic flare in his stomach, because, well. Just because. Spencer smiles widely at him, though, and does a quick roll on the drums, and Adam nods his agreement, and Frank does a fist pump of... victory? Joy? Something.

"Awesome," Frank says. "*Fucking* awesome, even. I'll give Greg a call when I get home, let him know he can put us on the program, yeah?"

Spencer says, "Yeah."

****

27\. The Reason

  
The thing is: for advertised performances, one generally, you know, needs a name.

Frank points this fact out when he calls Patrick approximately an hour and 27 minutes after he leaves Patrick's, approximately thirty seconds, according to Frank, after he hangs up with Greg. "He wanted to know what he should bill us as, and I was like, fuck. You'd think Smith would have thought of that little detail while we were all sitting around, you know? But I told him we'd think about it and get back to him tomorrow, okay?" Then, after Patrick agrees—because what else is he going to say?—he hangs up.

And that, see, is the reason that Patrick's spent the last ten minutes of his break between meetings doodling possible band names on a post-it note stuck to the blotter on his desk. Also, it's pretty much impossible to think of anything else when Frank keeps texting him things like *howbout 'we 're still here'*, or *'why th fck r u still here' 'cause evryone thot they got rd of us yrs ago!*

Pete's trying to help, too, where 'helping' means that he's sent Patrick three emails in the last hour, each with a string of question marks in the subject line. *You guys re lke a fuking puzzle*, one read. Another: *how about 'my bnd has more tlent then your band?' b/c its totally fuckingtrue!*

Patrick replies to the last: *Yeah, that'd go over well. Way to win friends and influence people, #286.*

The thing is: this should be easy, and it's not, which is why, when Amanda eventually comes to find him, he's spinning in his chair. He's a writer, for fucks sake. Some people would probably even call him an integral part of the scene. He should have eight band names ready to go on the tip of his tongue, and he does, really, it's just, well. None of them seem to fit *this* group of people, for *these* circumstances.

"Stump," Amanda says when she physically stops Patrick's chair, making him look up at her. "You haven't heard a word I said since I came in, have you?"

Patrick wants to protest that he had been listening, really. Really! But, well, Amanda's right, and he hadn't been, so. "No," he says. "Sorry. What was it you were saying?"

Amanda sighs, and on any other day, in any other circumstance, she would be looking put out. Amanda is very good at looking put out; over the last several years, she's developed a *look*. Apparently among the staff it's considered intimidating. Patrick might even let himself be intimidated by it if he, you know, weren't her boss. Right now, though, she actually looks a little gleeful, which makes Patrick think that he should probably be worried. There is a precedent, after all, for conversations that start with Amanda and gleeful looks ending with Patrick dressed up in a penguin suit someplace, quite possibly giving a speech.

Then again, this doesn't exactly look like penguin suit glee, because Amanda's spinning her braid around her finger rather than clasping her hands together and rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet; instead, it looks more like juicy gossip glee, which in Patrick's opinion is usually even *worse*.

Indeed, it is even worse, because as Patrick watches, Amanda sits down on the edge of his desk, rubs her hands together and says, "You'll never guess who just left the building!" She waits with visibly baited breath for Patrick to ask 'who?' and because she has long since proven that she can wait Patrick out, he says it.

"Casey!" Amanda says. "From Last Bastion! And you'll never believe this: she actually said *hello* to me. Politely! Then she *smiled*. I mean, what the fuck?"

*Now* she claps her hands together, probably waiting for Patrick to *say* something, and he would, except that he's suddenly too busy wondering 'what the hell?' and 'what did I forget?' and 'it's too late to add hidden tracks,' and 'but it's never too late for digital singles, fucking fuck--'

When it becomes obvious that Patrick's stewing in his own questions, Amanda continues. "*And* she asked where our very own Adam Jacobson was. She actually seemed disappointed when I had to tell her that he wasn't here right now, that she should check back later." A beat, a breath, then: "What do you think she *wanted*? Adam never did anything to her, right?"

"I have no idea," Patrick says, but then he thinks, wait. He remembers overhearing Casey and one of her bandmates talking about Adam, about teching, about touring, he does, vaguely. He thinks, maybe. He's saved from further contemplation, though, by his 3:30 knocking on his door.

*

Adam, as it turns out, really has no idea what Casey wants to talk to him about either, and Patrick doesn't mention his suspicions, overheard conversations.

The four of them are sitting in a pizza place a few miles from Patrick's studio and when Patrick tells him, he stops mid-bite, pulls the slice out of his mouth, blinks, and then says, "What the hell?"

Frank is chortling--that's the only word Patrick can think of for it--saying, "Dude, AJ, if even half of those stories you guys told me about those kids are true, you should call out sick for the rest of the week. I'm serious."

"Because that would go down really well with my boss," Adam says, looking at Patrick, but Frank is the one to elbow Patrick in the side. He says, "You'd let him off, right Stump? Totally a justifiable excuse, am I right?"

Adam ignores Frank, though, and keeps right on talking. "Also, I'll have you know that I am an *integral* part of the completion of 'Winter Hope, Spring Pearls'. Agatha Price is actually trusting me with a ten-note melody this time around. I have graduated beyond the three notes on repeat!"

The funny thing is, *Spencer* is actually the one to raise his hand to slap Adam's in victory.

Okay, so, Patrick's known Spencer for fucking years at this point—12? 14? Something like that—but he's pretty sure that he's spent more time with Spencer alone in the last nine months than in all of those other years combined, and there's apparently a difference between Spencer around his band and Spencer away from them.

"You're moving up in the world, kid," Frank says, then reaches across the table for a slapped hand of his own. "But you're going to go higher still, once we actually think of a *name*."

"For one show," Patrick says. "We're putting too much thought into this."

"They should just put down all of your names, seriously," Adam says. "List all of the rest of the bands they've got, then: with special guests Frank Iero, Spencer Smith, Patrick Stump, and more! I'll be the 'and more' and everyone will go 'who the fuck is that?'"

"Starring Patrick Stump as himself," Frank says, and now he kicks Patrick's foot, and seriously, what the hell? Between that and his elbowed side, it's been a long time since he's been this abused. Since Pete, Andy, and Joe, actually. Then, though, his whole body being abused was pretty much par for the course.

"Or," Frank continues, "how about, 'Starring AJ as The Kid!'"

"Fuck you," Adam says, but he's grinning. He pretends to lunge across the table to defend his besmirched honor or something, but Spencer puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him back down. Adam glowers, then shoves half a slice of pizza in his mouth and starts chewing loudly. After he swallows, though, his eyes widen and he points at Patrick, saying, "Didn't you--in one of the early Fall Out Boy songs--have a line like, fuck, 'starring you instead of me?'

"Honorable mention," Patrick says automatically.

"Starring me instead of you?" Spencer asks. Then he frowns. "No, can you even imagine how much shit we'd get? Exclusive evidence of long covered up band strife! From, like, five, seven, eight years ago!"

"People would totally not be surprised if we called ourselves something that refers back to our bands," Frank says. He traces his finger around the rim of his glass once, twice. "Like, I don't know. Fuck. Like Falling From the Dance Floor Romance. Something. What was your band called, AJ?"

There's a moment of silence then, actually, as Adam freezes, and Patrick doesn't know how much Adam told Frank about his old band--all Patrick really knows is that it didn't end well--but the sudden uncomfortable-ness is gone after a moment when Adam says, "The Still Wanderers. We thought we were all deep and shit."

Frank turns to Patrick. "We are so calling our first album 'Still Falling for that Disco Romance. Just so you know. And I'm not going to let us put it out without a cowbell solo either, FYI."

"Thank you for that," Patrick says. "Because we should really be talking about album titles when we're still trying to come up with a group name." Like they'll actually *get* to a point where they need an album title. Jesus.

"I actually sort of like Honorable Mention," Spencer says. "It's generic enough that people will go 'what the hell were they thinking?' It doesn't have any unnecessary punctuation..."

As much as Patrick hates to admit it, though, the "Starring..." is sticking in his brain and refusing to go away. "Starring your past?" he asks. "Starring the future?"

"Starring us?" Adam asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Because that doesn't sound egotistical at all," Frank says. Then, "I actually sort of like it. Your comeback, starring us instead of you."

"Comeback of the Year?" Adam says, "Because you know that that's what people are going to say." He drops his voice, apparently trying to imitate a reporter. "And today I was able to speak with the members of the aptly named Comeback of the Year. And their bass player Adam."

"AJ," Frank says, and Spencer chimes in with, "The Kid."

Patrick wonders if he should be worried that Frank and Adam seem to be rubbing off on Spencer. Probably.

"And three of us *are* multi-platinum selling artists," Frank says. "We should have the ego to think such a name is appropriate."

"Even for just one show," Patrick adds.

"Hell," Frank says. "You had the balls to name a song *Thriller*. People *know* about you, Stump."

Yes, Patrick thinks, they do, but what he says is: "More like it's reason number 437 that people will think it's a bad idea for retired rock stars to get in a room together: their combined egos will be unbearable."

At that, Adam's eyes light up. "Reason No. 437?"

Patrick nods, not understanding what Adam's getting at, but then Spencer's nodding along. "That could work," he says. "No connection to anything any of us have done before. Doesn't sound too cheesy or, like, well, like we were trying too hard."

"But we would know that it's secretly a code for 'we're all egotistical little fucks'," Frank says.

"And it's not like the world will be out an awesome band name if we only use it for this one show," Adam says.

"Reason No. 437," Patrick says, and it's just random enough, just generic enough that, well… maybe it *could* work.

****

28\. The Interlude

  
Pete doesn't actually say 'Hello' when Patrick picks up the phone. He doesn't say 'What the fuck, man? No seriously, what the fuck?' or 'Dude, this is just—" before trailing off. No, when Patrick answers the phone with a simple "This is Patrick," what he hears is laughter. Then a snort. Then more laughter.

It's his lunch hour—thus the reason he answered his cell—and he's eating soup, microwavable. He swirls his spoon once, twice around the edge of the bowl as he says, "Hi, Pete."

"Dude," Pete says, crowing the word. "This poster, man. It's fucking *classic*." Patrick hears rustling, which he's pretty sure means that Pete's waving said poster around, as if to emphasize his point, even though Patrick can't see him. Patrick might feel a little bit insulted except, you know, he's seen the poster in question. And maybe it makes him a snob, but, well. It's fucking photocopied, see, with letters made to look like they were ripped out of a newspaper or magazine. Someone actually drew mountains in the background in fucking *sharpie*, okay?

The text reads:

_This Saturday  
A Rock Concert to Benefit Devil's Canyon  
Starring Greased Lighters, the Barbie Doll Murders, Elevation Zero, Agent Orange, and Oscar the Grouchiest, and Many More!!!  
w/ Special Guest Reason No. 437  
(!!!the new collaborative effort from the members of Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, and Panic at the Disco!!!)  
Tickets $10!!!_

  
As Frank said on the phone the day before, "It's so fucking quaint, Stump, I practically *died*." And it is. It really is, because it's been fucking *years* since Fall Out Boy (or My Chemical Romance, or Panic) had anything but professionally done tour posters; more, even, since Patrick and Joe camped out in Kinko's at one a.m. mocking things up in Word, then printing them out on multiple shades of neon, like these kids did. Patrick's own copy is printed on bright orange; Pete's, he knows, is pink.

Actually, if Patrick wants to be honest, the whole thing is maybe a little refreshing. Even if it sort of does make him feel like he's back in high school again.

"This is awesome," Pete says. "I made a copy and posted it on the front door of our building. Dirty thinks that one of the suits on the 8th floor will probably tear it down, since it doesn't really match the décor, but it's not like I can't make more. Besides, you never know who might end up being in Riverside for the weekend, you know?"

"Yeah, right," Patrick says. "You never know." His voice is dry, though, because, well, in his group of friends at least, Riverside is going to be the place to be.

In addition to Pete, Jon is coming ("Apparently Tom and Cassie can take care of the bar for the night," Spencer said) and Gerard is, too ("I told him, after the number of book signings I've been to around this whole fucking country for him, he can come support some goddamn rocks," Frank said. "Which is when he chose to tell me that he already had his ticket.") Brendon will be there, and Ryan, of course, and the last Patrick heard, Bob had been poking around airline websites. Whether he actually bought a ticket or not, Patrick doesn't know.

It's *definitely* not like last time, where no one but Pete even had a chance to make the trip. No, this time the word is out, at least in the corner of the universe that Pete frequents. He's been talking it up in his blogs, writing things like: *reason #438 u shld be in riverside thiswknd!* There's even been a little bit of press. The longest interview was with he kid from the UC Riverside *Highlander*, but Patrick also answered an email from one of the editors of *AP*.

*Favor*, he told them both. *For a friend of ours. We're happy to do it, but it's not the start of anything more. *

"It's going to be a party, dude," Pete says. "Especially since you keep claiming that this is a one time thing. Joe's pissed about that, actually. He told me last night that he thinks you're a fucking tease. One time only! But wait, what's this? Some rocks need saving? Okay, two times only! I told him that safe money is on you playing again sometime—"

"Pete—" Patrick tries to interrupt, but Pete keeps right on talking.

"—because you're you, and we all fucking know you can't stay away, but Joe says that if this really *is* the last show you do, he should probably come see you. So expect a phone call later tonight with details from him. He's trying to get on the same flight as Jon and me."

Patrick says, "Jesus. It's not that big—"

"Big a deal?" Pete asks, and Patrick can picture Pete leaning back in his chair, maybe frowning, maybe not. Looking a little annoyed, anyway. "Fuck yeah it is. I mean, you say you guys aren't a real band—which, what the fuck ever, dude—but even so, like you weren't at Andy's opening night, or haven't flown halfway across the country to see some of my kids play, or like you didn't surprise Joe when he got that award. How is this any different?"

Patrick wants to say, 'it just is,' but Pete's right, it's not really any different at all. If Andy and some of his non-band friends were doing a charity show somewhere, Patrick would be there. He has been there for more of Pete's stuff than he can count. When Joe wins another award for his Trohman Classic line, Patrick will do everything in his power to be there, too.

So, what he says is, "So, it's going to be a party?"

"Absolutely," Pete says. "It's going to be the party of the year, dude, and you totally know it."  



	8. Bandfic: Snapshots From a Possible Future [23-31]

29\. The Arrivals

  
They aren't late, not really, but they aren't early either, because Pete calls while Patrick, Spencer, and Brendon are walking to the terminal from the parking structure, and says, "Dude, where the fuck are you? We landed, like, half an hour ago!"

"Or five minutes," Patrick hears Jon saying, and, okay, Patrick's still not really sure how this got so entirely out of control. One minute, he was agreeing to play a charity show (for rocks!) and the next, it was turning into a defacto extended family reunion: Pete, Joe and Jon in from Chicago, Brendon in from Vegas, Gerard from Portland, and Bob from... somewhere. Possibly Florida. Or maybe it was Maine? Basically, wherever it was the band he's doing sound for had played a show the night before. Andy, Ray and Mikey and Alicia had sent their regrets (they had actual shows of their own to play), and while Patrick will miss them, enough is probably enough.

"We're about ten steps outside the baggage claim," Patrick says. "Where the fuck are you?"

Pete splutters for a moment, which apparently gives Jon a chance to grab the phone because he's the one who says, "Still on the plane. We'll see you in, like, 15." In the background, Patrick can hear Joe saying, "Dude, Walker, you ruined it. We were going to send them on a wild-fucking-goose chase. It was going to be awesome."

Patrick laughs and says, "We'll see you then." Spencer's looking at Patrick, so he says, "Fifteen minutes or so," and then they're in the terminal and Brendon's throwing his arms wide and saying, "Oh, LAX, how I've missed you."

"Because you weren't here yesterday or anything," Spencer says, to which Brendon responds, "That was a whole 13 hours ago, Spencer. That is like, like, a *lifetime*."

They manage to find three seats in the baggage claim area, near the rental car kiosks, and Spencer and Patrick sit while Brendon goes to check the arrival board. Then he comes back and says, "Apparently your baggage claim-fu is still working, Spence, because their bags should be coming out right over *there*," as he points to carousel 12.

Provided they even have bags, of course, because Joe and Pete, at least, are only spending two nights with Patrick; they still have to figure out who gets the bed in the guest room and who gets the couch in the living room. Jon is staying with Ryan, as is Brendon.

"He's afraid that if I stay with Spencer, I'll kidnap him and take him back to Vegas," Brendon whispered to Patrick the day before, when Ryan and Brendon showed up at Patrick's to pick Spencer up from their second-to-last practice session before the big show. Ryan's worries might even have been justified, Patrick thinks, if Spencer hadn't taken on a few more teaching jobs while they prepared for this show, keeping him here at least another two weeks, the original three weeks turning into six.

Spencer just grins at Brendon. "You doubted my skills?" to which Brendon says, "Never, Spencer Smith, never." He almost throws himself into the empty chair on Spencer's other side, but only slouches for a moment before he sits up straight and leans across Spencer.

"Patrick," he says. "You need to come to Vegas again. We're in the process of working out a new routine to add to our lineup, and you need to see it. *Spencer* hasn't even seen it yet, I'll have you know, because he doesn't love me anymore…"

"Except how I've already got my ticket for opening night," Spencer says.

Brendon pulls back into his own space far enough to glare at Spencer. If Patrick had to put a name to the look, he would call it a 'we are not amused' face: lips pinched together in a straight line, brow just a little bit furrowed.

"Not the same, Spencer. Not the same *at all*."

"Of course not," Spencer sighs, and that's not the end of the conversation, but that's about the time that Patrick sits back and just listens to them banter back and forth, like it hasn't been four—or is it five?—years since they got off the road. Also, it helps to pass the time, because it doesn't seem very long at all before he sees Joe, Jon, and Pete approaching. They're actually pretty close by the time Patrick spots them, because the only thing visible above the crowd is Joe's hair, but then people are parting, and Joe stops where he is, throws his arms up into the air, and says, "Greetings, mother fuckers!"

Patrick stands up pretty much immediately, but Brendon's out of his seat first, running towards Jon like he's going to throw himself on him, possibly with legs wrapped around the waist. He manages to restrain himself apparently, since his arms just go around Jon's neck, tightly enough that after a moment Jon pats Brendon on the back and says, "Um, air?"

By this time, Pete's got himself wrapped around Patrick, Joe standing off to the side impatiently waiting for his own hug. When his turn comes, he actually tries to lift Patrick off the ground, for which Patrick feels he's completely justified in punching Joe in the shoulder until he puts him down.

"Dude," Joe says. "It's been too fucking long."

"Yeah," Patrick says, "it has."

"But our little Stump has been *busy*," Pete says. "Or didn't you hear? Starting up his not-band and all?"

"Fuck off," Patrick says, tugging at the bill of his hat. He sticks his hands in the pockets of his jeans and rocks back onto his heels, looking up at Joe and Pete, the both of them grinning at him.

Off to Patrick's left, the lights above the baggage claim start spinning, flashes of white light matched with the sound of an alarm. About half of the people hovering around them move en masse towards the carousel.

Pete and Joe sort of stand back, and Spencer asks, "So, are we waiting for anything?"

Joe and Jon have each got backpacks on—overstuffed, Patrick thinks, for what is pretty much going to be a 48 hour trip—but Pete's got a little rolling suitcase. It's got a Clandestine logo painted in red and white candy stripes on the front, a bright purple luggage tag.

"I've got one," Jon says, and Joe scoffs. "I'm ashamed, Walker. It seems like you and Pete have forgotten the meaning of 'packing lightly.' Remember how we all used to have to live out of the backs of vans? Which we shared with our equipment and our merch? Those were the days…"

"Yeah, right," Pete says. "Like you weren't the one who tried to sneak an extra bag into the van *every single trip*. Patrick'll back me up on this, right? You remember, don't you?"

"And not just that," Patrick adds, mostly for Jon, Spencer, and Brendon's benefit. "If he couldn't fit it into his bag and he wanted it on tour, he'd, like, hide his shit in random corners. Oh my god, we'd be finding his dirty socks in, like, the glove compartment six weeks into tour."

"That was totally Ryan, too," Brendon says. "Remember, Spencer? How we'd find his scarves all over the fucking place?"

Joe nods sagely. "Who do you think taught him all of the best hiding places?"

Spencer arches an eyebrow—an 'oh, so *you're* the one to blame' look if Patrick's ever seen one—but is derailed from whatever he wants to say by Jon suddenly reappearing with his duffle bag. Patrick hadn't even noticed him leave.

"So, we ready?" Jon asks.

Spencer parked on the 7th level of the parking structure, in the orange zone, and it takes them about five minutes of walking and elevators and more walking to make it to the car. Joe starts laughing at Jon about two minutes in, saying, "Dude, don't you wish you'd packed less now? I know, see, I *know*."

They actually brought Ryan's car to the airport, because it's a Land Rover, compared to Patrick's sedan, Spencer's rental. They spend a good minute staring at it, before Pete says, "Okay, Urie, Walker, we're all little dudes. Let's get friendly."

Joe takes one look at Patrick, whose hand is already gripping the handle on the passenger side door, and says, "What, I've been replaced as the object of your affections, dude? I'm hurt. I'm fucking devastated."

Pete reaches out to pat his shoulder. "Dude, don't be like that. You know I still love you best." Joe stares at Pete for a long moment, as if evaluating the truth in his words, before finally nodding, then diving head first into back seat, claiming the far window for his own.

Patrick shares a look through the windows of the car with Spencer, then opens his own door and slides into the front seat. Jon and Brendon somehow end up in the middle—Patrick is so not surprised—and then Spencer's starting the car.

*

Once upon a time, Patrick remembers instituting a closed practice policy. He remembers kicking Joe's friends out of Pete's basement, asking Pete's girlfriend of the moment to go upstairs please, because they really needed a bass player, asking his own friends to leave once or twice, because they just needed *one hour* of uninterrupted playing time, really. That was all.

He's thinking about instituting that policy again, because, see, instead of dropping Brendon and Jon off at Ryan's, as had been the original plan, Ryan just loaded them all immediately into Spencer's car to follow Spencer over to Patrick's house. Then, when Frank showed up at Patrick's door, maybe half an hour later, he had Gerard in tow.

From there, things pretty much devolved into conversation and catching up rather than practicing, and it's not that Patrick's not happy to have everyone there—he is!—but at the same time, *practice*, for a show *the next day*.

This is the reason why, an hour after everyone descends, Patrick takes a look at Spencer, who's sitting impatiently behind his drum kit, Adam who's sitting on top of one of the amps, watching Frank and Gerard talk to Joe and Ryan, Frank who's strapped into his guitar, fingers intermittently pressing down on strings, and says, "Okay, out."

Pete's the only one to hear him, apparently, and he turns to Patrick, raising an eyebrow. He interprets the look on Patrick's face correctly, though, because he starts shuffling towards the staircase upstairs, trying to herd Joe along as well.

No one else seems to be listening, though, which is why Patrick ends up tapping his finger against the head of the microphone, and says, "Hey. So. We actually need to do some practicing. Do you think we could do that?"

People don't look too chagrined, but with Pete's encouragement, they do head upstairs. "Yeah," Pete says, "I totally know where Patrick hides all the good snacks, so don't even worry. I've totally got us covered."

There's a moment of blessed silence, then, where Frank actually looks to be a little apologetic, but then Adam stands and Spencer grins at Patrick as he says, "I totally thought you were going to have to resort to curse words, just so you know."

"I've trained Pete well," Patrick says. Then, "So? Shall we?"

"We shall," Frank says.

****

30\. The Rocks (&amp; Roll)

  
Somehow, it turns into a fucking caravan: Patrick's car, with Pete, Joe, and Adam; Ryan's Land Rover, with Jon, Spencer, Brendon, and Keltie, who's driving, because they're also pulling the trailer with all of the equipment. Amanda shows up at Patrick's house about ten minutes before they're all supposed to leave, telling Pete, "My boss is a little delusional if he thinks I'm not making the trip to see this all go down today. Besides, I've got to support the kid, right?" This last is said more loudly, directed at Adam, who scratches the tip of his nose with his middle finger.

So, caravan.

Or that's what Frank calls it, at least, when they all pull up into the staff-turned-performer parking lot, only a short hike away from the main campus. He's standing with Jamia, Gerard, Lyn-Z, and Bob under a cluster of eucalyptus trees, and by the time Patrick gets out of his car, Frank is fucking cackling.

"Dude, Gee," he says. "Look! Our caravan of roadies has arrived with all of our shit!"

Gerard nods, and Lyn-Z giggles. She's still wearing her hair in pigtails; today they're streaked with bright orange and yellow, seemingly to match the buttons pinned to Gerard's jean jacket.

Jamia and Bob—because they are helpful, unlike Frank and the rest of his associates—come forward to help unlatch the trailer door, and pretty soon all of them, Keltie and Amanda included, are pulling boxes out of the back, unloading amps and pieces of the drum set, spare guitars and pedals and everything else they might possibly need.

"I'd forgotten this, you know," Pete says, leaning his chin on Patrick's shoulder. "How we used to have to carry all of our own equipment and shit around. How did we ever get anywhere, you know?"

Ryan makes a noise of agreement, at which point Pete says, "Dude, you so don't even get to talk. We had you in a van for what, a whole summer? Try *years*, dude. Try breaking down on the side of the highway, like—"

"Three times in one week," Frank says. "In the middle of nowhere, where the most exciting thing around are the fucking, like, dandelions."

By this point, they're starting to attract a little bit of attention from the other performers crowded into the lot. Patrick sees a few kids trying to hide their stares, looking too cool for all of this, more who aren't even trying not to. It's at this point that Greg appears at Frank's side. Patrick's met him once before, but he introduces himself anyway, shaking all of their hands. He's got curly hair and an official event t-shirt—a screen-printed copy of the sharpie mountains on the front, a list of participating bands on the back—and he's practically bouncing with energy.

"People are *already lining up in the quad*," he tells Frank. "We've already sold more tickets than we did last year. We have actual *press*."

"Of course you do," Frank says. "You've got an awesome lineup."

Behind him, Patrick hears Ryan saying, "Yeah, they've got at least three bands I've been trying to hear."

"*And* the most important band of all," Brendon says, and out of the corner of his eye, Patrick can see him sling an arm across Spencer's shoulders.

"Exactly," Frank says. "Because we are just that awesome."

Greg laughs along with them, then says, "I've got a few details to go over with you, if you have time?"

Frank looks at Patrick, then nods. "Now's as good a time as any," he says, and Patrick would probably stay and help unload some more, except that Pete pokes him in the side and says, "Go."

So that is how Patrick finds himself standing underneath a striped tent-y thing with Frank, Spencer, and Adam, listening to Greg give a rundown of how the day is going to go. As the headliners, they're on last, of course. They're guesstimating they'll go on stage at approximately 3 o'clock, if everyone else on the lineup actually stays within their allotted amount of time. They've taken over the dining commons as a place for people to warm up if they need to, and Greg's sorry that it's not a private dressing room, but he can try to keep anyone from bothering Frank and his band.

At this point, Frank says, "Greg-o, chill. It's going to be awesome, I swear."

Greg takes a visible, deep breath, and says, "Okay, yeah. Okay. So. Um. What do you need?"

"We'll let you know, okay?" Frank says.

Greg nods.

*

There are actually, well, a lot more people at this thing than Patrick expected there to be, and not just in the tent off to the side of the stage that seems to have been designated the VIP tent, although it's pretty much just Patrick's group that's filling it, because it's not just their former band mates and assorted spouses anymore, either. Kevin and Aiden from the Aqua Angels, Benji and his bass player from the Atomic Turtles, more, more. The crowd keeps growing, both in the tent and outside of it, and by the time Patrick makes his way to the edge of the stage during the band directly before them, he thinks that there are 3,000, maybe 3,500 people out there watching, and more are filing in every minute.

"Jesus," he says, and Spencer says, "I know. At least it's not Reading though, you know?"

"Jesus," Patrick says again, because yeah, in comparison, this is just a drop in the bucket. This is just a small portion of the crowds he used to play for anyway, but—but he can see this crowd, unlike the crowd when they did their show at The Gateway. He can see people with homemade t-shirts, Reason No. 437 done in glitter and puffy paint, plain black paint, marker. He can see old Fall Out Boy/My Chemical Romance/Panic at the Disco t-shirts, as well as shirts from pretty much every other DecayDance band Pete's ever signed. Not a lot, yeah, but they're out there, and this is just—

"We're going to rock their fucking faces off," Frank says, coming up behind them and dropping his arms over their shoulders. "They aren't going to know what hit them."

"Fuck yeah," Adam says.

"*Fuck* yeah," Spencer echoes, and Patrick has no choice but to agree.

*

This time, it's different.

Oh, they get introduced just like last time, but this time they don't get to walk out onstage shrouded in the anonymity of darkness, no one knowing quite what they are about to see. No, this time, there are maybe 4,000 faces peering back at them, most clapping, some screaming, a lot just staring. People get to watch as Spencer gets settled at his drum kit, as Adam adjusts the strap on his bass, as Patrick and Frank get their microphones set to the height they need them to be at.

After that, with no curtains to hide behind, well, Patrick is starting to remember why they'd started doing leaps out of the stage, or distracting the audience with videos while they made their entrance, because after years of that, it actually feels a little bit awkward to just stand there, to just start playing.

This is the thing: while two weeks is longer than they had to prepare the last time, it still wasn't enough time to do more than practice their combined back catalog. Which is why their set list is pretty random: a selection of songs from their former bands, their friends' bands, a few random classics thrown in for good measure.

They start out with one of Patrick's again, just to give him a chance to get comfortable on stage. They'd talked about doing 'Thnks Fr Th Mmrs'—despite their lack of violins (and chimpanzees)—but Frank had put in a vote for 'Thriller', if only because the idea behind it was just as egotistical as the idea behind their name.

Patrick is the one to start them off, picking out the initial melody, and it's a long intro, long enough for him to wander back to Spencer's drum kit then back to his microphone again, for him to see Frank grinning like a fucking maniac, poised and ready to start playing, for him to turn his attention to Adam in the instant that he and Frank both join in. There's no hesitation there, just guitar riffs sliding out across the quad, and when Patrick turns his attention out towards the audience, he sees that people are already nodding along, that they've already identified the song.

"That summer we took threes across the board," he sings, and suddenly it isn't awkward anymore, because just like last time, at The Gateway, instinct kicks in. This is what he knows how to do, after all. He still knows how this all goes, and the audience does, too, singing along, joining Frank and Adam on the backup choruses, scream-singing, "Long live the car crash hearts."

They'd considered stopping, doing their introductions after the first song, but in practice it had actually seemed easier to create an arrangement that led right into their second piece, 'Give 'Em Hell, Kid'. Adam's choice, actually, but Frank had agreed, an oldie but goodie, he'd said. And Spencer certainly had no objection to banging the hell out of his drums.

Adam is the one to carry the initial melody on this one, five seconds worth of playing before Frank and Spencer join in, dirty guitar riffs and steady beats. At the right moment, Frank steps up to his mic, leans in as close as he can and says, "Oh baby, here comes the sound," right before Patrick starts in on the first verse: "I took a train out of New Orleans…" It's a faster paced song than Patrick's used to performing, and his tongue feels, just a little bit, like it's getting twisted up in his mouth, but if Gerard could do it, he can do it, and when he gets to "This is how we do it—" Frank and Adam join him on the "--on the murder scene" and from that moment forward, it's full steam ahead.

It's at the end of song two that they take their introductory break, and Patrick takes the time to step away from his microphone so that Frank can take over.

"Hello, Riverside!" he says. "How the fuck are all of you today?"

They get quite a bit of clapping and screaming in response to that.

"Fuck yeah," Frank says. "So, I think some of you probably know who we are already, but I've been told we should introduce ourselves. Just in case, you know. Just in case you're standing there wondering who the fuck these guys on stage are and why the fuck people are actually screaming for them. So, quickly: our illustrious singer is Mr. Patrick Stump. We've got Spencer Smith on drums. We've got AJ—better known as 'The Kid'—on bass."

Patrick looks over at Adam as Frank's talking, watches as Adam flips Frank off. Frank laughs at that, voice shrill in the microphone, echoing out across the campus, before he continues.

"And me, I'm Frank Iero. Way back when, we used to be in a few bands called Panic at the Disco, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and the Still Wanderers. Perhaps you've heard of them?"

He pauses then, lets the crowd scream. Patrick hears people shouting his name, Frank's, Spencer's.

"Today, though, well. *Together*, we're pretty much reason number 437 you shouldn't let retired musicians hang out in a room together. Because we'll start talking, right, and the next thing you know, we think it's a good idea to start playing songs from our glory days and force them on unsuspecting ears!" Frank laughs, then says, "Really, though, we want to thank you for coming out and supporting this awesome cause and all of these awesome bands that played before us today, and we hope that you'll enjoy the rest of the show."

As Frank finishes speaking, Patrick starts picking out the intro to the next song. So completely random, the product of another evening spent eating pizza after all of them were off for work for the day, a conversation about what songs they'd always wanted to perform on stage, yet had never had the opportunity to.

It takes more than a few moments—most of the intro—for the crowd to figure out what song they're actually performing, but then Patrick's singing, "At first I was afraid, I was petrified." There's a resounding cheer at that, and Patrick can see a group of girls and guys at the front barrier doing some sort of disco dancing. They aren't doing it quite as quickly as Gloria Gaynor performed it, but a whole lot faster and rougher than the Cake cover.

Off to Patrick's right, Frank is bouncing with his guitar, halfway dancing as he plays. Adam's not quite that comfortable on stage yet, but he's definitely bobbing his head in time with the beat.

"I will survive," Patrick sings, then throws his arm out at the audience, letting them carry the song for a line, longer, since they all know the words, are all signing along anyway.

After that, there's barely a breath before they launch into song number four. None of the Cobras are here today, but out of the corner of his eye, off to the side of the stage, Patrick sees Pete holding up his cell phone, knows who is on the other end of the line. "The city is at war," Patrick sings. "Playtime for the young and rich. Ignore me if you see me, 'cause I just don't give a shit." Frank and Adam are currently spinning on their own sides of the stage, slowly making their way towards the middle. They meet to Patrick's left, playing guitar at each other as Patrick sings the "Come on, live it up while you can," making their way back to their mics in time for the echoed chorus of, "Bang, bang, shoot 'em up, yeah!"

Song five is another cover, another MTV pop princess: Jade. It's a love song, but their remix is more of a dance punk number, fast lyrics, interludes that allow Patrick to head bang as much as he wants.

Then, because their set is nothing if not totally random and really, why *shouldn't* they play some Nirvana, Frank starts in on song number six, Spencer joining him on the drums, Adam keeping a steady rhythm of notes going.

"Load up on guns," Patrick sings, "bring your friends." When the chorus comes, he lets Frank and Adam take the repeated "hello"s as he wanders back to Spencer, curves over his guitar and just *plays*. He's into it enough that the second time the chorus comes around, he lets Frank take over: "With the lights out, it's less dangerous. Here we are now, entertain us. I feel stupid and contagious."

Song number seven is back on Patrick's home turf, because, well. Who turns down the opportunity to perform 'Beat It' when given the chance? No one. So, 'Beat It' it is, with Frank taking the guitar solo, all of them taking the opportunity to rock the fuck out.

Then, last, because it seemed like a good song to end on, they go back to the Panic vault: "Come save me from walking off a window sill," Patrick sings, and as he does, he turns towards the side of the stage, and there's Brendon singing along, dancing in place. Pete is joining in on the dancing, too, Jon and Joe nodding their heads with the beat, and Patrick's smiling when he turns his attention back to the crowd.

All three of them are singing when they reach the final lines—"We must reinvent love, reinvent love," and then it's just Patrick singing the last words, "Reinvent love," trailing off, and then they're done, bowing, listening to the screams from the crowd, almost louder still from the side of the stage. Because everyone's there, all of their band mates, spouses, friends, and as soon as he's within reach, Pete's got an arm around his shoulders, Joe's slapping at his back, everyone's saying things like, "Fucking awesome, dudes," and "So when's the next show?" and "Next time you should think about playing such and such," and Patrick looks at Frank, at Adam, at Spencer. And he smiles.  


  
****

31\. The After Party

  
So, there's an after party. Of course there's an after party, because Pete is Pete, and Frank is Frank, and Ryan is Ryan, and it is pretty much a reunion. Party-wise, though, Patrick was thinking that they might all go out for dinner, something, but when Patrick goes to make the turn towards the highway, Pete says, "No, you're going to want to make a left here."

Patrick raises an eyebrow, but does what he's told, and that is how he ends up parked in front of a hole-in-the-wall looking bar, 'T- -U-R-S. B- -N-G-O' letters on the sign above the door. Patrick raises an eyebrow, but Pete just smiles.

They meet up with Frank and Jamia (who are also grinning) and their group, as well as Ryan and Spencer and their carload on the sidewalk out front, then Pete pushes open the door, and suddenly they're in a room decorated with streamers and balloons and—fucking Pete—a table full of 'Reason No. 437' t-shirts in an array of colors. There are tables of food, two bartenders behind the bar, apparently ready to serve drinks, and Patrick would glare at Pete, except he's being pushed into the room by the mass of people behind him, and the next thing Patrick knows, Pete's jumping on Joe's back, saying, "Dude, we've got to fucking *celebrate*."

There are 16 of them there to start, but within ten minutes of their arrival, the doors to the bar start opening again, and the guys from the Turtles and the Aqua Angels come in—full bands this time—and more of Ryan's kids arrive, and Karen's there, blue hair now aqua. Then there are more people arriving, bands from the benefit today, others that Patrick's worked with in the studio, and given that Amanda refuses to meet his gaze, he's suddenly thinking that this may not have been all Pete and Ryan and Frank.

Pete climbs on top of the t-shirt table about fifteen minutes into the party and says, "Hey, you fuckers. I expect you all to take these and wear them, commemorate this occasion, okay?" He drapes one over his shoulder, then picks another one up off of the table and stalks towards Patrick. It's bright red, white lettering, and Patrick starts trying to back away, but Joe grabs him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides as Pete pulls Patrick's hat off and forces the shirt over his head. He puts Patrick's hat back on before Patrick can commit totally justifiable homicide, then dances backwards, hiding behind Ryan and Keltie.

Patrick sighs and straightens the shirt out, pushing his arms through the sleeves. He may be glaring at Pete as he does it, but the next thing he knows, Frank and Jamia are grabbing shirts off the table, and Frank's tossing them to Spencer and Adam, and then Jamia is herding the four of them together for their first official not-band photograph. Then somehow—and this, actually, was not the way Patrick was expecting it to go—he ends up at a table with Frank, Adam, and Spencer, their bands mingling around them, catching up. Ryan's kids are floating around the outskirts of the room, more people coming in still, and then someone starts the jukebox in the corner of the room, 'Take On Me', and half the room starts singing along: loudly, off-key, mostly shouting the words rather than singing them.

And this, okay, this Patrick has missed. Not the t-shirts, or the parties in his honor, but the spending time with the people who've known him for years: Gerard, always ready to talk comics; Bob making sly remarks under his breath; Ryan and Brendon and Jon and their constant familiar banter; Joe and Pete being, well, Joe and Pete. So really, as the evening wears on, it's no surprise to Patrick that the 10 of them end up at a table in the far corner doing the inevitable reminiscing that always seems to happen nowadays.

Patrick's back is to the room, Pete on one side, Spencer on the other, and the door's been opening and closing all night, he's not paying a whole fuck lot of attention to it anymore, so he's not really sure why he chooses that moment to turn around.

Or maybe it's just his self preservation instincts kicking in, since when he turns to look over his shoulder he sees that Casey, Last Bastion's singer, is standing right inside the doorway, looking around. Patrick turns to look at Pete, but he's looking just as confused as Patrick.

"It's not like we didn't invite half the greater Los Angeles music scene," Pete says. "She could have heard about it from anyone."

Patrick nods and turns to look back over his shoulder and sees that Casey has spotted Adam, who's talking with the members of the Aqua Angels, and is walking in his direction. Adam gets a little bit of a deer-in-headlights look in his eye when he notices her approach, Patrick sees, but he manages to hide it quickly enough. Then Casey is there, talking to him, and Patrick wonders if his suspicions are true, if she is asking the kid to go out on tour with them, tech. He sees Adam's eyes go wide, then he's saying something, but Patrick can't read lips, can't hear from this far away. Before he can do more than wonder, though, Bob is saying, "Isn't that right, Stump?" and Joe's saying, "Of course he's not going to fucking agree. Tell him, Patrick. Tell Bryar what really happened," and Patrick has to say, "I'm sorry, what?"

So, Joe launches into his version of events, with Bob chiming in with corrections, and Pete is leaning his head on Patrick's shoulder, and yes, Patrick thinks again, yes, he's missed this a lot.

Concert Set List (a.k.a., things I would like to hear Patrick Stump sing):  
'Thriller', by Fall Out Boy  
'Give 'Em Hell, Kid', by My Chemical Romance  
'I Will Survive', originally by Gloria Gaynor, cover by Cake  
'The City is at War', by Cobra Starship  
'Smells Like Teen Spirit', by Nirvana  
'Beat It', by Michael Jackson  
'Mad As Rabbits', by Panic at the Disco


	9. Snapshots from a Possible Future [32-34]

**32\. The Answer**

  
The thing is: it's an off-hand comment. It's an afterthought. Because Patrick and Adam are sitting in his office, eating a late lunch, discussing the weekend: the show, the after party, Patrick's trip to the airport with Pete and Joe the afternoon before. And it's just a flicker of thought: he remembers seeing that Casey, the lead singer of Last Bastion, had finally tracked Adam down, remembers wondering if she was asking him to tech for them.

So he asks.

So he says, "I saw you taking to Casey on Saturday night."

Adam nods. "Yeah," he says. Then he grins, almost looks like he's going to start laughing. "I—she actually asked me if I might be interested in going out on their upcoming tour with them. As a guitar tech, mostly, but playing the piano for them onstage for a few songs."

"Wow," Patrick says, trying to sound surprised. Trying not to sound like he suspected the question was coming. He waits for the rest: how Adam's going to go, how he'll need to take a leave of absence from the studio, one which Patrick is sure he won't actually come back from.

But then Adam says, "I told her no," and Patrick stares at him for a long moment, longer, because that's just. That's just *stupid* is what it is, because Adam is of an age where he should be out on the road. He should be stuck in the back of a bus traveling 12 hours a night, more hours a day, rather than in the studio, recording backing parts for Gary's new age artists or young upstarts with half his talent.

"I called her this morning and told her that I was going to pass," Adam continues, when it becomes obvious that Patrick isn't going to immediately say anything. He's looking at the floor now, frowning. He runs a hand over his head, pushing his bangs up off of his forehead, then letting them fall forward again in messy clumps.

It takes a moment, but Patrick finally stutters, "Why?" Because seriously, *why*?

"I'd rather. I'd rather play a gig once every two months, you know?" he says. "I'd prefer to just fuck around, covering, like, the fucking greatest hits of the last fifty years with you all in your basement, for however long this lasts, than get up on stage every night playing something with a group that will never be mine. I've—I've done that. I don't want to do it again."

Now he looks back up at Patrick, and Patrick wishes, suddenly, that he hadn't, because he looks almost… broken, actually, like he maybe hopes that Patrick will tell him that he made the right decision. Or tell him that the four of them aren't just fucking around, playing together for themselves, or maybe, occasionally, for charity.

But Patrick can't tell him that because it's not true. Because this is just for fun. Because that's all it was ever supposed to be. Spontaneous fun. Nothing more. Not what Adam was (is) so obviously hoping for.

"I—" Patrick starts, but he really doesn't know what to say, and maybe Adam gets that, or maybe he gets that whatever Patrick does say isn't going to be what he wants to hear, because he halfway smiles then, cracked, and says, "So that was my answer."

Patrick wants to tell him to change his mind, tell him to call Casey back. What he says is, "Yeah, okay. Okay."

*

He plans to say more to Frank.

Frank, who is currently sitting at the score console on lane 30, wearing his pink bowling shirt. There's black embroidery on the front: his name in cursive over his chest, a skull and crossbones underneath.

Greg is currently up at… well, Patrick wants to say 'at bat', but that would be mixing sports metaphors. Whatever it's called in bowling, Greg is up and he's weighing his ball in his hand. It's blue, heavier than it looks—Patrick knows, because Frank dropped it into his hands not 15 minutes ago with barely a 'here, catch!'—and as Patrick watches, Greg takes the suggested three step approach towards the lane, then releases the ball as he kicks his right leg backwards, the toe of his shoe sliding over the boards.

He gets a strike.

"I told you," Frank says. "We totally pulled coup. He, like, represents Riverside in the NCAA. In *bowling*. He balances out the rest of us losers and makes us suck not quite so much."

Patrick nods. He nods because there's not much else for him to do, sitting here in a bowling alley in Riverside, watching Frank bowl, because this is not the place to talk about what he wants to talk about. Namely, that Adam said *no*.

*No.*

Because he was *happy* with what he was doing with Patrick, Frank and Spencer. Because fucking around in Patrick's basement was preferable to going out on the road with Last Bastion—and, okay, so they might drive Patrick up the fucking wall, yes, but Adam is young still. Adam could actually be out on stage every night doing this for a living.

Beside Patrick, Frank sighs. He puts a hand on Patrick's shoulder and says, "Okay, you stay here. I'm up now, but after I knock down my grand total of five pins—yeah, Ed, I'm betting five this time 'round—I'll be back and you can tell me all about whatever's got you looking like a cheerful little storm cloud."

Because he doesn't know yet. Because after Adam had walked out of Patrick's office earlier, Patrick had, well. He'd tried to go back to the mix he'd been playing with, tried to go back to work, but after he'd wasted two hours and had walked the perimeter of his office about 20 times, he'd made his way out to his car and he'd just started driving. He'd shown up at the Ragged Nest a little after six, and Jamia had taken one look at him, then drawn him a map to the Sunrise Lanes. When he'd arrived, Frank smiled, motioned for him to take a seat, offered to let Patrick bowl one of his frames—totally against the rules, dude, but frame three is totally yours if you want it—and, well. He hadn't asked.

But now that they're on the last frame, apparently he's ready to. This frame, Frank actually manages to get seven: two, then five. He throws his arms up in victory, having actually bowled 132 this game. Greg is at 250 and Eduardo at 211, but Herbert Von S, the owner of the bookshop that Greg works at, is at 128.

"Fuck yeah," Frank says. He slaps hands with Eduardo and Herbert, bumps chests with Greg, wipes his face with his shirt, leaving the fabric darker pink, then turns back to Patrick and says, "Let's go get a drink."

At first Patrick thinks he means somewhere else. Maybe at the bar down the street; dark corners and hushed conversation while Patrick explains just how stupid Adam is being, and can Frank please, please talk some sense into him?

Frank doesn't head out of the building, though. Instead he heads towards the bar at the other end of the bowling alley, where there's actually a gate keeping those under 21 out. It's loud—'Back in Black' playing over the speakers, accentuated by the background noise of ball after ball rolling the lanes, knocking over pins.

"Two," Frank says, pounding a fist on the bar, and Patrick expects the bartender to slide two cheap beers their direction, but instead he fills up two glasses of water, slices of lemon adorning the rim.

"I get fucking parched," Frank continues. "You wouldn't think of bowling as a particularly thirsty sport, you know? But you fucking burn some calories, let me tell you." Then, as they find a seat: "So."

"So," Patrick says. He takes a sip of the water, then unhooks the lemon and squeezes it out over the ice cubes.

He wants Frank to ask for elaboration, to ask for an explanation, but he just stares. And stares. And that's when Patrick remembers that he was in a band with Gerard and Bob; he knows the power of the silent interrogation.

"Fuck," he says finally. "The fucking kid."

"What'd AJ do?" Frank asks, and Patrick actually opens and closes his mouth twice before he speaks because there are so many things he wants to say right off the bat. So many things.

"Casey," Patrick says finally. "Last Bastion of Sanity girl? She—they—asked AJ to go out on tour with them, tech. Do keyboard, you know. Get up on stage and play every single night."

Frank—because he and Patrick are clearly on the same wavelength, Patrick is gratified to see—looks vaguely impressed.

He opens his mouth to say something, but since Patrick is pretty sure that he can anticipate his question, Patrick rushes on. "He said no. He said he'd rather play, like, a show every two months with us, or, like, fucking pop songs in my basement than go out and do something that was never going to be *his*. It's a fucking national tour, on a CD that's already taking the fuck off, and all I can think is, *what the fuck is he thinking?* Why the fuck would he want to stick around playing 'soothing chords' on fucking new age albums when he could actually be out *there*?"

He waves his hand in the direction of the parking lot, and he has more to say: about the people Adam would meet, the connections he'd make, the opportunities that it could lead to—he's heard Last Bastion's name being floated for this summer's Warped Tour. Fucking *Warped*.

Before he can continue, though, Frank says, softly, "And you'd really want him to say yes? You'd want him to pack his bags and head out onto the road and, what, forget all about us?"

"Yes!" Patrick says, because that's what he's been saying for the last few minutes, thinking for the last few hours, but when he says it like that, *just* like that, *yes* he wants the kid to go, *yes* he wants the kid to leave… the word actually tastes a little bit bitter on his tongue.

"I—" he says. "Yes, I do. And so, yeah, I wouldn't choose to spend a few months out of the year with Last Bastion, but AJ'd meet a whole fuck load of people, make a whole lot of connections. We both know he needs to be in another band and—"

"And you're saying he's not in one already?"

"We're not—" Patrick says. "We're—"

They aren't a band, after all. They just hang out in Patrick's basement and play together multiple times a week, perform the occasional show, and, yeah, so maybe Patrick's fingers have gotten a little itchy over the last few months, maybe he doesn't feel quite like he's finished his day unless he sits down and plays for a bit, and maybe when he thinks about it like that—

"Oh, fuck," he says, and if he were alone, he would absolutely be banging his head on the table. Or on his arm resting on the table, anyway.

"Yeah," Frank says, and when Patrick glances at him, he's smirking, looking almost smug, the fucker.

"We're a band," Patrick says weakly.

"We are," Frank says. "Sorry to break it to you, but we have a name and merch and everything."

And the thing is: Patrick had honestly, honestly believed it would never happen again. Too many years with Fall Out Boy, no one in the world that he wanted to play with more than Pete, Andy, or Joe. Or any of their friends. And that was apparently the loophole that he hadn't realized existed, but given the people he's friends with, the scene that he helped to create, maybe he should have.

"Did you know?" Patrick asks slowly, glancing up to meet Frank's gaze.

"That we were a band? Um, *yeah.* See: the aforementioned name. Also: merch."

"No," Patrick says quickly. "When you walked into my studio last fall, were you wanting to start up a new band then? Were you looking for this then?"

Frank stares at him for a long moment, then shakes his head. "No," he says finally. "No, I was honestly just looking for someone to jam with. But we fucking clicked, dude, and you don't throw that away. You know that."

"Even if we're never more than a glorified cover band? Even if we don't do more than play around here?"

"We don't need to be more than a glorified cover band," Frank says. "We're fucking rock stars, Stump. We're expected to develop quirks in our old age."

"Yeah," Patrick says. "Right. We are."

*

He doesn't see Adam at all the next day, which is… Actually, it's probably good, because Patrick honestly doesn't know what to say to him. Not without Spencer being there, too, because apparently they need to be having a fucking *band meeting*.

He does see Adam and Spencer on Wednesday, though, when they show up at his door at seven o'clock, just like they usually do. Adam comes to the door first, Spencer pulling up just as he comes inside. Frank hasn't arrived yet, and it's a normal day, right, except for the fact that Patrick has no clue what the fuck to say.

So, he just listens: Adam telling Spencer about some show he went to the night before, the band of a friend of a friend, Spencer telling tales of the kid he's helping out now, how he needs to be practicing about four hours more a day than he is already if he's going to make something of himself. Frank shows up halfway through that story and as Spencer's wrapping up, he looks at Patrick, grins. Seems to be able to tell that Patrick doesn't know what to say.

With every *other* band that Patrick's been in, after all, it's been a conscious choice to actually be a band. It was always someone's idea; it had never just *happened* while Patrick apparently wasn't fucking paying attention.

"Do you think he'd appreciate you staying around a little longer?" Frank asks Spencer, and Spencer looks confused for a moment, asks, "You have another show lined up for us?"

Frank shakes his head, then drops an arm over Patrick's shoulders and says, "But we *could* have more, is the point. Stump finally figured out Monday night that we were an actual band. Despite the fact that we have a name and, you know, merch."

"Sorry," Patrick says, and he doesn't know if he's apologizing for being so slow on the uptake, or for somehow pulling these guys into a band when none of them had been asking for it. He can't deny that Frank's right, though: they've clicked. He was also right when he said that you don't voluntarily walk out on that. You just don't.

Spencer doesn't look sorry, though. He's pushing his bangs away from his face and grinning that Spencer Smith smile of his: wide, bright, eyes scrunched up. It doesn't compare to the look on Adam's face, though, because the kid is just… He's fucking *beaming*, is what he's doing, grin spread ear to ear. He looks like he wants to be saying things like, 'Seriously? No, *seriously?*' He stays where he's sitting, though, pressed into the corner of Patrick's couch, his knee bouncing up and down.

"Fucking *finally*," Spencer says. "I have about three more weeks of lessons lined up, and then I was going to call a band meeting. Non-band meeting. Whatever. I was going to call one and ask what the fuck we were doing." Then he laughs. "Dude, Ryan's going to buy you the biggest fucking fruit basket, like, ever. Brendon, on the other hand, fights dirty, so you might want to keep an eye out. Just in case."

"Oh, God," Patrick says. Because he's going to have to tell Pete, Joe, Andy. And Frank will be telling—or maybe already has told—all of his band mates, and—

And this is going to be a *thing* now. No more excuses that they're just fucking around, no more claims that they aren't *really* a band, so they won't be doing *real* shows or making CDs or doing magazine interviews or going on tour. Because they're a band with a back catalog that consists of a whole lot of radio hits and nothing that's theirs.

"Hey," Frank says. "Dude. You don't get to fucking freak out yet, okay? Save it for when MTV starts calling you up, wanting to run an MTV news brief on this or something."

"For a band that doesn't have any songs," Patrick says, because suddenly that seems more real than anything else. They're a band with *no songs*.

"Hey," Spencer says. "We have songs. Between us, we have fucking hundreds of songs."

"And that's not counting all the millions of songs out there, just waiting for us to play them," Adam says, and it's the first time he's spoken since Frank made his pronouncement.

"Because we really want to be a glorified cover band," Patrick says, and Frank says, "Hey, I told you, the four of us are fucking rock stars. We've earned the right to play whatever the fuck we want. If that's our old hits, awesome. If it's fucking Cher? Double awesome."

"I want to do a hair metal theme one night," Adam says—not sounding hesitant, not sounding at all like the kid from a few months before, the one who couldn't quite believe that Patrick Stump was asking him over to his house to fucking *jam*. Because this is AJ's band, too. Just like it's Patrick's, Frank's, Spencer's, the four of them in it together.

"Diva night," Spencer adds. "Can you even imagine? Cher, Whitney, Mariah, Rihanna."

Frank slaps his thigh. "Hey, we got a start on the Rihanna already, thanks. Gerard Way, ladies and gents."

"Think about it," Spencer continues, "we could do every song we've ever wanted to do. Because, okay, here's the thing. You're officially acknowledging that we're a band—finally—but we've been a band for weeks, okay? Nothing has to change. We're still doing this for fun. We're still planning on fucking around in your basement, okay?"

"But now we have an excuse to play more shows around here," Frank says. "Eduardo's already called dibs on an intimate taco joint performance, just so you know. I know a few other club owners who'd kill to get us in their space, too."

"And if at some point we start writing songs of our own," Spencer says, shrugging, "well—"

"We start writing songs of our own," Adam finishes.

And that's not at *all* the way Patrick's used to working: Pete feeding him lyrics, Patrick writing the music, Andy and Joe fleshing their parts out. Backs of busses and holed up in hotel rooms, a two man job until suddenly it wasn't anymore.

But Spencer's right: this is still just for fun and it still may not ever be much more than the four of them fucking around in Patrick's basement and Patrick's not even sure he really wants it to be.

Nothing really has to change at all.  


****

33\. Four Shows (I)

  
Pete laughs, the fucker. Like, a lot. Patrick can picture it, too: Pete sitting at his desk, feet kicked up on top, shoelaces from his sneakers hanging down, leaning back in his chair.

"Dude," Pete says. "You should learn to listen to me sometimes. How long ago did I call this shit? A really fucking long time ago, so please, give me credit where credit is due. Now when's your next show? I'm going to be your fucking groupie, just so you know."

Because that's really what Patrick needs, right? Pete following him around the greater Los Angeles area, sitting in the front row, making faces while Patrick tries to sing. And of course Patrick would actually be able to see him, because the venues that they're going to be playing (all two of them!) are small enough that Patrick can actually see people's faces.

"Sunday," Patrick says.

Pete clucks his tongue, sounding distressed. "But that's only three days away. And Monday morning I've got to be in New York! Dude, what the fuck is this shit?"

"Blame Frank," Patrick says. "Or possibly Spencer."

Frank is the obvious choice, because they're playing at Eduardo's, doing an intimate taco performance, or whatever the hell Frank had referred to it as, but Spencer is one of the few people he knows, aside from Pete, who could manage to arrange a performance in 24 hours.

"Okay, so your next show then. I expect at least two weeks notice, dude. At-fucking-*least*."

"How about a week and a half?" Patrick asks, because, well. Show number two is scheduled for the next Saturday, at a club Ryan knows about, at a place where he owes the manager a favor.

("Don't you mean, the manager owes you a favor?" Patrick had asked, but Ryan had just looked at him, his gaze weighted in a way that Patrick was coming to understand again, and Patrick had said, "Oh. Um.")

Pete, of course, laughs again. "Dude. Dude. Fuck. You deny for *how* many months that something is going on, and then within 72 hours of your grand realization, you're halfway to a mini-tour! Jesus, Stump. I've missed you so fucking much."

Me too, Patrick thinks, but he doesn't say it out loud.

*

Show one:

Eduardo's place is… okay, it's really fucking tiny to begin with. All twelve of the indoor tables have been cleared from the floor, an extra one moved outside in case people actually show up to sit and eat, and there's a platform stage filling one corner of the room. Eduardo's two sons are acting as security, but given that they printed up all of 20 fliers—one for Patrick's studio, one for the Ragged Nest, two for Eduardo, one for the book shop, and the rest to scatter around campus—Patrick's not exactly expecting much.

But it's a Reason No. 437 gig. It's not just Patrick Stump, Frank Iero, Spencer Smith, and Adam Jacobson getting up on stage, playing together, it's their *band* and for some reason, Patrick's actually a little bit terrified. Or, well. Nervous. Really fucking nervous. And he doesn't even have a greenroom to freak out in, because Eduardo's isn't set up to host shows. They're making their grand entrance from the fucking *kitchen*.

They aren't really planning for it to be a long set, only 45 minutes or so. Ten songs, maybe. Start at nine, over by ten. According to Eduardo, there were already 20 people there at seven, though. There were 40 by eight when Patrick arrived. It was standing room only by the time they actually left the kitchen at 8:57, Frank first, Adam bringing up the rear. They actually have to work their way through the crowd to get to the stage and, well, the last time that Patrick did that, Fall Out Boy hadn't been large enough for it to really be an issue.

They take the stage, though, get positioned behind the microphones, Spencer taking his place off in the corner behind his drums. He taps out a few beats, then stops, and that seems to be Frank's cue to start speaking.

"So," he says. "So, thanks for coming out tonight. There are, well. Ha, there's a whole fucking bunch more of you than we were expecting, actually, which is awesome. Really fucking awesome. So, um. Hi! We're Reason No. 437—yes, we're officially admitting to being a band now. Also, we're continuing our quest to cover every song any of us have ever wanted to cover. So. Um. Fucking enjoy this, okay? Because we sure will be."

They have plans to do heavier songs at their next gig—Patrick still isn't quite over that, the fact that there is already a *next* gig—but for now they're, well. It's not an acoustic set, but the place isn't big enough to handle a serious amp, so the songs they're playing are quieter. Some are covers of songs by bands they toured with in the past. Others they picked out of their collected back catalog. And, as always, they've plucked a few off of the radio, putting their own twist on them.

They start with one of those: The song that hit number one on the Billboard charts the week before, a pop princess singing about her boyfriend leaving her for her best friend, and possibly stealing her car, too? Patrick's never really understood the meaning of the second verse. It gets them warmed up, though, Frank bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, Adam posing with his guitar at the front of the stage, and Spencer at the back, keeping their beat. They punk up the song some, not as much as some of the other pop covers they've done, but some, and their audience appreciates it, chuckles turning into full blown laugher as Patrick sings about how he'd seen his best friend's number on the boyfriend's cell, the horror, the horror.

He'd cracked the fuck up the first, er, five times he'd tried to sing it, but by the tenth time, he could actually mostly keep a straight face. It's fun, is what it is, and okay, yeah, Patrick has really fucking missed this.

From there they go into a Silverchair song, 'Straight Lines', Adam's choice. It's softer than anything any of them (except maybe Spencer) have played regularly in their shows, a good segue between the pop and the rest of the set. The chorus has been stuck in Patrick's head for the better part of the last two days—"Wake me up, lower the fever. Walking in a straight line. Set me on fire in the evening. Everything will be fine"—and while the kids in the audience don't necessarily recognize the song right off the bat, by the end, they're singing along, too, some of them even dancing in place.

From there they go straight into the next song, 'Keep the Car Running', Spencer drawing soft noises out of his cymbal in place of the strings at the beginning. Frank moves over behind Patrick (he barely fits) as he starts picking out the melody. Adam joins in almost immediately, then Patrick, and there's no way for them to replicate the Arcade Fire sound, not with just four of them, but Patrick's been a fan of theirs for years, and this whole band thing is really about nothing more than playing songs that they enjoy, right?

They take a quick breather—long enough to take drinks of water, beer—before they start in on song number four. Frank starts the guitar on that one, the short riff, pause, then another. A least one member of the audience recognizes the song already, Patrick thinks, given the "Woo-hoo!" he hears from the back of the room. It's then that he notices Jamia and Karen sitting on top of the register counter, arms linked. Jamia waves and Patrick grins and that's Patrick's cue to join in. He gets up close to the mic and sings, "I want you to remember, a love so full it could send us always. And I want you to surrender, all my feelings rose today." The kids in the front row are singing along with them now, some of them even pumping their fists in the air. Frank is singing along, too, adding a few bits of harmony here and there. He turns to Spencer after the first verse, and he must issue some sort of silent challenge because he can hear Spencer's drumming get just that extra bit sharper.

"Now you," Patrick says into the mic about two minutes into the song, when he sees that more than half of the people in the front row are singing along anyway. He stops playing his guitar and tips his mic stand out towards the crowd. Only long enough for them to start shouting the words back to him, though, before he's singing, his fingers picking up the melody again: "The chemicals between us, the walls that lie between us, lying in this bed."

Frank takes the few seconds of guitar solo, just enough time for Patrick to get his breath again before he jumps right back into the song feet first. Adam's worked his way behind Patrick, is now playing at Frank, their guitars just inches apart, the two of them carrying all of them to the end of the song together.

They take a minute's break then, while one of Eduardo's sons brings the portable keyboard up to the stage. There's barely enough room for it on Adam's side of the stage, but he, at least, has proven that he can play within a limited two foot square area, where as they all know Frank would be more likely to kick the damn thing over.

The original idea was for Adam to play the keyboard on the next few songs, but in practice, they realized quickly enough that they actually needed a bass player for at least two of the three. So, during the lull, Patrick and Adam switch places. Patrick notices that Adam spends the few minutes it takes Patrick to get situated talking to Spencer, occasionally glancing over his shoulder. Like he's not quite sure what to do in the center of the stage, rather than off to the side.

He turns forward when Spencer counts out the beat, though, and stands still as Frank starts in on the intro. Adam joins in, then Patrick starts playing the keyboard, leaning forward so that he's within range of the microphone. It's not a song anyone will know, but Patrick hadn't really cared when they'd been discussing the song choices during their last practice. The song's got a good beat, though, and by the time he gets to the second verse, singing, "She said, 'You're pretty good with words, but words won't save your life.'" Frank's nodding his chin along with the beat, and Patrick just *knows* that he's waiting for next week, when they'll have a stage large enough to accommodate them, amps strong enough that they can let loose.

Especially since the next song is even softer. This was Spencer, possibly influenced by Ryan or Jon, or maybe Cassie. It's a fucking catchy song, though, and that's what matters; that seems to be what most of this evening is about: catchy.

This time, it's Patrick who starts them out, quick chords, hands moving up and down the keys. "They made a statue of us and put it on a mountaintop," he sings, and then Frank and Adam are joining in, playing comparatively softly, as if they could *possibly* emulate the violins. Once again, Patrick thinks, definitely Spencer's song. "Now tourists come and stare at us. Blow bubbles with their gum. Take photographs, have fun, have fun."

After that, it's a song with a lot of—not bounce, because 'Us' is a fucking bouncy song. *Umph* would probably be a better word. It was an anthem from the summer before: sun and surfing and all of those things that Frank and Patrick and Spencer seem to prefer not to engage in. Patrick would include Adam in that, too, but the kid's been known to spend his days off fucking *jet skiing*. It definitely has more guitars, though: the opportunity for Frank to actually bang his head slightly, for Adam to lose himself in the music far enough that he starts dancing around the stage a little bit.

After that, it's another radio hit, a Frank pick, from a band that would probably list one of the bands My Chem influenced as one of their influences: guitars and vocals that have just an edge of screaming to them. Frank and Adam help with that.

Then they move onto Steel Train, one of the bands that had gone out on the road with The Hush Sound and The Cab eons ago, a band that Fall Out Boy had taken on tour with them once, too. 'Alone on the Sea' and Patrick likes that the intro is over a minute long, giving all of them a chance to just play.

"Coming home from a month away," Patrick sings finally, the build up complete. "Empty cabinets and bed. Well if there's love in this house again, then let the lights shine through the windows and onto my head."

Then, their final song of the evening, an old Motion City Soundtrack cut. They take a quick breather before Patrick launches straight into the first verse: "Let's get fucked up and die." There are squeals from some of the girls in the crowd at that point, and the next thing he knows, it's pretty much a sing-a-long, the whole crowd shouting the words back at him, Frank and Adam, too. Too soon they reach the end, though, and Patrick hears himself singing, "It hurts, it destroys 'til it kills. I am tired and hungry and useless." There's one more guitar interlude, and then he's leaning into the mic and singing the final line: "In this department."

There are catcalls and screams then, as they take their bows, and then Eduardo's sons are trying to clear a path back to the kitchen for them, but. But, there are all of 60 people there, some of them already wielding pens, and yeah, so Patrick was just up on stage a few weeks ago, but.

But this is different.

He stops a foot from the stage, asks the girl in front of him what her name is, and when she asks to take a picture, he says, "Of course." Frank gives him bunny ears, he's pretty sure, but when he turns around to glare, it's Adam who's looking innocently back at him.

Then a girl and a guy approach the kid, say, "AJ, right?" and when Adam nods, looking more than a little dumbfounded, they ask to take a picture.

Patrick hears Adam say, "Um," but before he can offer to snap the picture himself, another kid steps in front of him with a napkin and pen, wanting him to sign. He does, and when he's finished, he spots Frank and Spencer farther into the room, each surrounded, each grinning as widely as Patrick feels he is, too.

  
Set list:  
1) Straight Lines-Silverchair  
2) Keep the Car Running-Arcade Fire  
3) The Chemicals Between Us-Bush  
4) Stuck Between the Stations-The Hold Steady  
5) Us-Regina Spektor  
6) Alone on the Sea-Steel Train  
7) LG FUAD-Motion City Soundtrack

  


**34\. Four Shows (II)**

  
Pete comes out of Patrick's guestroom, yawns widely and stretches his arms towards the ceiling in an exaggerated show of still-waking-up-ness, but there's a glint in his eye that makes Patrick think he's been up for longer than he'd like Patrick to believe. Patrick's suspicions are confirmed when he sees the flecks of red, blue, gold caught underneath Pete's fingernails.

Patrick stares for a long moment, then says, "What the fuck, Pete. Is that *glitter*?"

Pete curls his fingers into fists, burying nails against palms, and says, "Glitter? Where the fuck would I get glitter, Stump?" but he's grinning, looking playfully guilty, and Patrick just sighs.

Because a week and a half ago, Pete had said he was going to be Patrick's groupie, and Patrick *knows* that Pete's definition of groupie-like behavior usually seems to involve cardboard signs and bubble letters and magic marker hearts and, yes, glitter.

"Jesus," Patrick says, but it's mostly fondly; in reality, he wouldn't want Pete any other way and Pete knows it.

"I wouldn't want you feeling underappreciated," Pete says. "I don't want you feeling like your fans don't care enough to spend hours of their time making you signs proclaiming their devotion."

And that's about the time that Patrick starts thinking about, you know, punching Pete in the arm or something, hard enough to make Pete wince, but not hard enough to bruise. Pete is grinning too widely, though, is far too pleased with himself, and really, the only thing that Patrick can do is say, "Jesus," again.

  
*

Show two:

Unlike Eduardo's, The Backlot actually has a backstage area. It's a hallway off of which the bathrooms also sprout, but still: they don't have to make their way to the stage by walking through the crowd.

This, in Patrick's opinion, is a good thing. Especially since The Backlot is not only about five times bigger than Eduardo's, holding around 300 people, but apparently is also sold out.

According to Pete anyway. He pretty much crows the news in Patrick's ear: "Dude, they're turning people away at the door! Another two weeks and you'll be selling out the Gateway! I'll totally bet you, like, a thousand dollars that I'm right about that. You in? You in?"

It's a bet Patrick *should* take, because he knows absolutely that Pete is wrong. It's the novelty factor, is all: Frank, Spencer, Patrick, all on stage together, doing this thing. He can understand, a little bit. If, like, Kanye or Lupe Fiasco or Usher ever decided to come out of retirement, he'd try and get a ticket damn quickly, too.

On the other hand, Kanye, Lupe and Usher would never dream of fronting cover bands, so maybe it's not so similar.

But: it's still a novelty, this whole thing, and he's pretty sure that eventually the shine will wear off. In two weeks, they could be barely filling Eduardo's. In three months, they could be playing in front of five people, taking requests from the audience. Ten years ago, thoughts like that would have made Patrick feel horrified, like he'd somehow failed; that was why they'd quit when they had after all. They'd wanted to go out while they were still in demand. So, they had.

But that's not what this band is about.

This band is about—

Well.

It's fun. That's all. And that's okay with Patrick.

*

Ten minutes before they take the stage, Spencer herds the three of them out into the alleyway behind the club, then proceeds to glare at the five kids who were already out there smoking until they finally move, walking a few steps farther away. It's not like they really have anything to talk about, but Ryan's taking care of last minute sound checking and Pete's probably warming the crowd up, and the last thing any of them need is to be in there, listening to that, the crowd.

Frank takes the opportunity to light a cigarette himself and leans back against the wall, taking a drag before carefully blowing the smoke away from Patrick. It actually feels good to be outside, Patrick thinks; already the club had been starting to feel a little bit too warm for Patrick's liking, which doesn't bode so well for how he'll feel halfway through their set. It's not long, not compared to the sorts of shows he'd put on back in the day, but 50 minutes of music isn't exactly a quick set either.

Adam shivers a little, then bounces up and down on the balls of his feet. It's his thing, his pre-performance thing, and apparently Patrick knows him well enough to know his nerves-induced tells. He wonders if he should be worried about that.

"So I was telling AJ about this girl that came into the store today," Frank says, like they haven't been standing outside in near silence for several moments. "With her mom. And this kid, she was, fuck, like eleven? Twelve? And she was dressed entirely in pink, okay? She had fucking *pigtails*, right? And she just walked right up to the counter and asked if we carried any Goth clothes, because she would like to become a Goth, please. Fucking *please*."

Spencer chokes a little bit, and Adam's laughing.

"And her mom was just letting her? My mom would have fucking shit bricks, you know?"

"Fuck yeah," Frank says. "But this kid's mom, she was giving opinions on the clothes and shit. We sent her away with a skeleton hoodie and some skirts and black t-shirts and shit, you know, the ones with the bunnies in skeleton masks? And her mom was the one who got her the little make-up bag with all the eyeliner and the dark lipstick and shit."

"That's awesome," Spencer says. Spencer's staring down the alleyway towards the kids, whom are all (very, very obviously) trying not to stare. He cracks his fingers and rolls his shoulders and fuck, Patrick thinks, this pre-performance stuff is way too fucking normal. Already. Show number two.

Then the door is opening and Pete is sticking his head outside. "Little dudes," he says. "Your public awaits. So, you know, anytime you want to grace them with your fucking presences? They'd probably appreciate it."

Spencer flips Pete off before Patrick can, and that feels normal too, when it really shouldn't, as far as Patrick's concerned, because Pete is *his*, but as they walk back through the door, Pete crowds up to Patrick and drops an arm over his shoulder, pulling him close quickly enough that Patrick tips slightly off balance.

"Go get 'em, tiger," Pete says, his voice rough in Patrick's ear, and then, somehow (damn fucking small venue), they're at the steps that lead up to the stage. The houselights are down, but with the lights coming from the back of the venue, at the bar, it's more dim than anything else.

"*All of you* go, get 'em!" Pete continues, and he transfers his arm from Patrick's shoulder to Ryan's—or his waist, anyway—and together, Patrick thinks, the two of them almost look like proud parents, watching their kids head out onto stage.

Adam walks onto the stage first, followed by Frank and Spencer, Patrick last of all. He grins at Pete one more time, then makes his way up the three steps. Then he's up on the stage, and while he'd heard the shouts and screams for his band mates (*his band mates*), they seem to get even louder when he steps out from behind the speaker. He takes his guitar from the last tech on stage, some kid who works for the venue, then gives it a strum, just a test. Then he turns back towards Spencer, who counts them down before launching into the intro to the song, two beats before Adam joins in on the keyboard and Frank starts plucking the strings of his guitar.

The savvy ones in the audience, or the ones who've made a habit of watching 80s movies, realize what song it is right away, and are already mouthing along when Patrick steps up to the mic and sort of hum-sings, "Mm-ba-ba-de, um-bum-ba-de, um bu bu bum da de." Frank and Adam join in on the, "Pressure!" before leaving him to sing the, "Pushing down on you, pushing down on me, no man ask for." They're back then, singing, "Under pressure!"

It's a slower song than Patrick usually prefers to start sets on, but also, one can never really go wrong with Queen and Bowie. Plus, it sets the mood for the evening, which pretty much continues to be songs that any of them have ever wanted to perform, ever. Tonight: 80's rock edition.

They'd debated stopping after that song to introduce themselves, or explain themselves, for Frank to give his opening remarks, but after they'd decided on the set list, Frank had laughed and said, "I think it pretty much explains itself, don't you?"

So, they move right into song number two, with Ryan running on stage to take Adam's bass while he starts playing the intro on the piano, as Patrick trades his guitar for Adam's, because they've got to have the bass, but they need the piano more. Patrick can tell the moment that some of the audience figures out what song they're playing, because he hears shrieks of laughter. There's a "Dude, fuck!" that sounds suspiciously like Pete, and then Patrick's stepping up to the mic, trying to look especially serious: yes, he is singing this with a straight face. Yes, he can emote as much as Meat Loaf while singing. Really.

"And I would do anything for love," he sings, looking somber, cupping the mic. One of the venue guys apparently has a sense of humor, because he starts making the lights strobe and now Patrick can see that Pete's signs—magic marker hearts and glitter and all—are scattered throughout the audience.

"I'd run right into hell and back. I would do anything for love, I'd never lie to you and that's a fact. But I'll never forget the way you feel right now, oh no, no way. And I would do anything for love, but I won't do that, no I won't do that."

Then there's a crash of cymbals as Spencer starts in with the drums, and from that point on, they take the song in their own direction: less ballad-like, more guitars. They take it back towards quiet in the last 30 seconds, though, as Patrick sings, "Anything for love, but I won't do that…"

They take a break then, and Frank steps towards his microphone. "Fuck," he says, and he turns his grin across the stage, towards Patrick and AJ. "So, now I'm thinking we should have worn wigs. Long poofy hair? Or maybe mullets? That would have been fucking *awesome*, yeah? Yeah?" The second 'yeah' is directed at the audience, and they chorus their approval.

"So tonight," Frank says, "we've decided to embrace our inner 80s children. Well, all of us but AJ, that is, 'cause he wasn't even a fucking twinkle in his mother's eye during the 80s, isn't that right, kid?"

Adam flips Frank off, but it's a lazy gesture, friendly. Frank laughs and turns back to the crowd. "Basically, we're out here to have fun. We want you to sing along, dance along, fucking jump up and down if you feel so inspired. Because we're going to be doing the exact same things up here. Well, I am. So, if you know the words, join in. If you don't? Well then, I guess you're fucking out of luck."

With that, Adam and Spencer begin the intro to song number three. Frank joins in a moment later, with Patrick taking the bass again. Patrick taps his foot along with the beat until it's time for the first line: "I get up in the evening and I ain't got nothing to say. I come home in the morning, I go to bed feeling the same way."

Indeed, following Frank's instructions, everyone on the floor has started dancing around, some of them jumping up and down, and when the chorus comes, Patrick tips the microphone out to them, letting them shout the words back at him: "You can't start a fire, you can't start a fire without a spark, this gun's for hire, even if we're just dancing in the dark."

From there, they move into song number four. Adam takes his bass back as Frank begins picking out the opening melody, as the venue's tech hands Patrick his own guitar. Spencer chimes in ten seconds in with a steady beat, and ten seconds later, Patrick sings, "Take me down to the paradise city, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty."

They'd actually debated whether or not to play this song, but the guitar interludes had won them all over: long enough for Patrick to wander around the stage, to lose himself for several seconds just playing.

As they trail off, they take a small break: all of them getting water, getting reoriented on the stage. Patrick takes the bass back, because they're back into keyboard territory. Adam starts them off, with Spencer joining in a few beats later, starting a steady rhythm with his foot pedal, and Frank and Patrick start in a few beats after that.

"It doesn't hurt me," Patrick starts. "Do you want to feel how it feels?"

Of all the songs they're playing, Patrick expects this to be the one that the least number of people are familiar with. Especially since they're doing a cover of a cover, half Placebo, half Icon and the Black Roses, Kate Bush at the root. Patrick likes the Placebo cover the best, but the Icon cover is faster, more in tune with the rest of their set: riffs and guitar solos and opportunities for Frank and Adam to do backup vocals.

By the time Patrick hits the second chorus, more people are singing along: "And if only I could make a deal with God, I'd get him to swap our places. Be running up that road, be running up that hill, be running up that building, and if only I could—"

To be honest, Patrick's not quite sure how the next song ended up in this set. He's pretty sure that Spencer mentioned it first, laughing at the time, and then Adam had started trying to talk in an Australian accent, which had set Frank off, and after that, there was no way the song *wasn't* going in their set list.

Spencer counts them in, Adam carrying the melody on the piano, and then Patrick's singing, "Traveling in a fried out combie, on a hippie trail, head full of zombie." He can see the kids in the front row trying to mouth along, but the words to the verses aren't as easily understandable as the words to the chorus, which is why he's not surprised with the volume in the room increases ten-fold once he sings, "Do you come from a land down under?"

He looks beyond the main crush of the crowd at the stage and sees some girls at the back doing something that looks like swing dancing, hands linked, spinning around.

After they finish that song, they take a quick breather while Adam takes his bass back yet again, while Patrick picks up his rhythm guitar, but before they even really have a chance to get settled, Frank starts playing the intro, and because he and Spencer are clearly in league, Spencer's totally ready to go with the drum parts. And then, on the second repeat of that (because his band is totally in cahoots and apparently doesn't believe in allowing Patrick sufficient time to get his breath back), Adam starts up the bass, and then Patrick only has another five beats or so before he's on.

"When I'm out walking," he sings, "I strut my stuff. Yeah, I'm so strung out. I'm high as a kite, I just might, stop to check you out."

Patrick, impossibly, hears a high-pitched whistle at that, and he lifts his hands off of his guitar for long enough to flip Pete off. He can see Pete down by the edge of the stage, smiling, and when Patrick continues, "Let me go on, like a blister in the sun," he's smiling too.

From there, with barely a pause, it's straight into their second to last song of the night: Billy Joel.

They get 30 seconds of intro this time and Patrick takes the opportunity to catch his breath, get a drink. He gets back to the mic in time for Frank to come up to him and play back-to-back for several long moments. When it's finally time for Patrick to start singing, "Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray, South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio," Frank doesn't go back to his spot, though. No, he continues across the stage, crowding into Adam's space, then backing up slowly, almost taunting him into following him back across stage, which Adam does. Patrick watches them out of the corner of his eye.

This is what Patrick knows about this song: if he hadn't known most of the lyrics already, there is no way they would be playing it live tonight, because there are just too many random ideas put together.

Adam shares Patrick's mic during the second group of names and places, moves over to Frank's on the third, and stays there for the chorus, on which Frank starts singing, too. Spencer just keeps pounding the *fuck* out of his drums.

Patrick actually lets the three of them carry the first chorus—"We didn't start the fire"—while he takes the opportunity to wander back to Spencer, get a drink, grin at the way Spencer's totally getting into it, hair flopping around and sticking to his cheeks.

He makes it back to the microphone just in time to begin the second set of people, places, things. It's not a long song, not in the grand scale of long songs, but by the time he reaches the fifth cluster of lyrics, Patrick can feel his tongue starting to trip over itself just a bit, then a bit more, and it's a relief each time he gets to the chorus so that he can swallow, take a breath before diving back into the song again.

And then, finally, they reach the last chorus, "We didn't start the fire, it's always burning since the world's been turning. We didn't start the fire, but when we are gone, will it still burn on and on and on and on…" Frank's the one to stop playing first, then Adam, then Spencer, and pretty soon it's just Patrick playing, the entire crowd singing the 'and on and on and on' back at them, over and over, five, six times, and then Frank picks up his guitar again, Spencer his drumsticks, and in a synchronized movement, they end it: riffs, a clash of cymbals.

They're all breathing heavily at that point, taking a moment to swallow, breathe, and Patrick can tell that most everyone in the audience thinks that that's the end, that they're done for the night, but someone starts chanting "One more song! One more song!" and the entire room picks it up quickly. They'd been planning on one more song anyway, and Frank raises his hands, saying, "Fine, fine, you convinced us. As if we could fucking play an 80s night without featuring this song, right? Right? Anyone have any guesses?"

He doesn't give them a chance to shout out their answers, though, before nodding at Adam, who starts playing the first notes on the keyboard. Just loudly enough to give Patrick the key.

"We built this city," he sings, and the crowd just joins right in. "We built this city on rock and roll."

Pete and Ryan, Patrick can see when he looks towards the corner of the stage, are laughing, and Pete's trying to dance, one arm up in the air, while Ryan studiously resists. Everyone else is dancing, too, though; the crowd seems to pulse with it, and that, more than anything, makes Patrick realize that this could actually work, that maybe people really are interested in seeing this sort of thing, will maybe stay interested even after the novelty has worn off.

Finally, though, the song comes to an end, all of them taking to their mics to sing the last of the repeating choruses: "We built, we built this city, yeah, we built this city, we built, we built this city…" They let their instruments fade out and with a last wave at the crowd, they all head off stage again.

*

So, while the venue does actually have a backstage area, it's not a truly effective one, because they get pretty much mobbed as soon as soon as they reach the bottom of the steps, a general crush of people wanting photographs, autographs, Patrick to talk to their BFF on the phone, please please please.

Spencer, Frank, and Adam are getting it too. Adam looks less shocked that people are actually wanting to talk to him this time around; in fact, when Patrick catches his eye, his grin pretty much splits his face.

Patrick's not sure how long he's caught there before Pete finally makes his way up to him. "So, can I get you to sign my t-shirt?" he asks, almost sing-songing the words. "Maybe call my BFF Joe?"

"Shut the fuck up," Patrick says, punching at Pete's shoulder. Then: "Can you believe this?"

"Um, yeah," Pete says, like it should be the most obvious thing in the world. "You're Patrick fucking Stump, dude. You know how this goes." He pauses for a moment, surveying the dwindling crowd. "Just wait until you start writing your own shit again. I give it six months before you're selling out arenas."

"I'm not—" Patrick starts. "We're not—"

Pete just raises an eyebrow and Patrick trails off.

"Fuck you," he says finally, weakly, and Pete just laughs, pulling him in for a hug.

*

And really, Patrick thinks the next night, he probably should have been more adamant when telling Pete the 'fuck you', because he's been thinking it pretty loudly for the last five hours. Since he dropped Pete off at the airport. Since he got back to his house and wandered down to his basement and started fiddling around on his acoustic, just playing strings of notes. Notes that shouldn't have been anything close to melody-like, yet were, that just happened to almost match the rhythm of some words that had been floating around in his head, words that he hadn't even really let himself acknowledge.

Words that he now has on a sheet of staff paper, with *notes*, damn it, basic melody, a bit of a bass line, and this should be a good thing, he thinks, except that this isn't what he'd signed up for.

He'd signed up for fun.

A glorified cover band.

Small shows, no stress.

He knows that he was being willfully self-delusional, thinking that he'd be satisfied with that for however long this ends up lasting, but still, still.

Still.

And so for the moment, he feels fully justified in directing his… whatever he's feeling (not quite anger, not quite fear, not quite anything he can put a name to) at Pete, because Pete had *known* this would happen once he mentioned it, once he put the idea in Patrick's head, damn it, and Patrick hadn't been ready for it, hadn't wanted this yet. Except for how he apparently had, or else he wouldn't be doodling these words, this idea.

*Damn it.*

"Fuck you, Pete," he says again, quietly, and then he lets his fingers fall back to the strings.

Set List:  
1) Under Pressure-Queen/David Bowie  
2) I'd Do Anything For Love-Meat Loaf  
3) Dancing in the Dark-Bruce Springsteen  
4) Paradise City-Guns N' Roses  
5) Running Up That Hill-Kate Bush/Placebo/Icon and the Black Roses  
6) Down Under-Men at Work  
7) Blister in the Sun-Violent Femmes  
8) We Didn't Start the Fire-Billy Joel  
9) We Built This City-Jefferson Starship


	10. Snapshots from a Possible Future (35-36)

35\. Four Shows (III)

  
The problem is, Patrick's started thinking in notes again.

Well, okay, it's maybe not exactly a problem in a scream and panic and stress sort of way, but for nearly half of Patrick's life now, when he's thought in notes, it's been for his band. The first band that he thinks of as *his*, anyway. Rhythms and flourishes particular to Andy's style, lines that allow for Joe's epic spinnage, Pete playing his bass on top of his head, behind his back, licking the neck.

The notes he's thinking now, though, they aren't for Pete, Joe, or Andy. No, now he's thinking of the way Frank likes to fall to the stage, play on his back; of the way Adam's confidence is increasing, the way he's starting to move out of his zone. He's thinking of the way Spencer just *pounds* on his drums, his whole body working.

And it shouldn't be scary, right? It's not, not in an 'ooh, I'm so scared!' way, but the thing is, while Patrick's never had a problem writing or producing for other artists, Pete, Joe and Andy have always (always) been his first thought. And now, instead of consciously taking two mental steps up the energetic playing scale to get from Joe to Frank, or two steps down to get from Pete to Adam, well. Now it's only one, or maybe half a step, and when Patrick comes up with a riff that he thinks is particularly awesome, one that will have Frank ping-ponging across the stage (if it's large enough), well.

He actually thinks of Frank first. Not Joe.

And that's maybe the scariest realization of all.

Especially since he still hasn't mentioned to anyone, not even Pete, that he's even writing again. Especially when it's keeping him up late at night, too late, and he's waking up tired still, with the melodies from the night before running through his head.

So, one week to the day since Pete left, a week and a half before their next show—down in Riverside again, at the same place they had their charity concert after party—and when Patrick lets Frank, Spencer, and Adam into his house for their scheduled practice, the first thing Spencer says to him is, "So, you've decided sleeping is for the weak?"

Patrick laughs, but he knows that he's got circles under his eyes, that he's a day or two overdue for a shave. The house looks exactly the same as the last time everyone came over, though: namely, there are no pieces of staff paper lying around, covered in ink-smudged notes. Patrick's acoustic is safely hanging in the guitar rack in his basement.

"Fuck yeah," Patrick says. "Who needs sleep, right?"

Adam's the one to start hum-singing the Barenaked Ladies' song, and Spencer chimes in with the words: "Who needs sleep? Well, you're never gonna get it. Who needs sleep? Tell me what's that for."

Patrick flips him off, and the kid opens his mouth, probably to say something that will devolve into twenty minutes of good-natured ribbing, but then Spencer says, "Yeah, so maybe instead of arguing about this—when the answer is obvious, sleep is one of the great things in life and should be appreciated as such—we should actually decide what sort of show we're going to be putting on next week?"

They've talked about other theme nights: 60s, 70s, the Beatles, the Stones, the greatest hits from the pop princesses of the last decade.

"I heard a song the other day that was totally, like, a lost Pretty. Odd. song," Adam said. "Clairebelle—you know, Gary's new folk project?—she had it on repeat during her lunch break, for inspiration or something? It was about a horse with no name, or some shit like that. Something about getting out of the rain, too. It was totally you, Smith."

"So, like, group inspirations?" Frank asks. He says it slowly, quite obviously weighing what else they'd end up playing. "So we'd have, like, the Beatles and the Descendents and, like, the early Chicago punk? What songs would you choose, Stump?"

And Patrick has songs. He could name lots of songs, right here, right now, but of course the only one he can think of is the unfinished one, stuck in the fucking top drawer of his desk. And for some reason, at this moment, he doesn't actually want to think about singing anything else. So he says, "Um, I was thinking. I was, um, thinking we could try something different?"

He's totally adlibbing here and he's sure that it probably shows, is probably totally fucking obvious, but then: "I mean, you keep getting stuck playing all of this softer stuff for us, right, so why don't we do a show where, I don't know, we play some of your influences. Yeah, like the Descendents, or Thursday, or… I don't know, who else?"

"You want to scream?" Frank asks, an eyebrow raised, because Patrick's voice is quite obviously not made for screaming. Frank's, however, is, and so Patrick just shakes his head.

"Do you know," he says after a beat, maybe too long to be truly believed, but no less true for that, "I haven't had a chance to just play guitar since I was 17? This is all about us having fun, right? And I know you like to front—every once in awhile at least, right? And for once, I think, I just want to fucking *play*."

And, okay, yeah. This is totally off the top of his head, a thought he'd only entertained briefly in the past, on days when he was in a mood, capital M, and the last thing he wanted to do was get up on stage and sing, or sometimes when he watched a guitarist totally lose themselves in a song the way that a singer just can't.

He's almost sure they're going to laugh, say no. Pete would have laughed, said no, because for all that Pete knows him better (still) than almost anyone on the planet, he's also a true believer in Patrick's voice, and Patrick's need to be at the microphone. At least for Fall Out Boy.

This, however, is quite obviously not Fall Out Boy, and that has never been more obvious than this moment, actually, when Frank starts grinning, looking more than a little excited. Spencer cracks his knuckles and Adam's eyes are wide, but not in a way that bespeaks disagreement.

"Seriously?" Frank asks, and Patrick looks to Spencer and Adam for verbal confirmation.

"Yeah," Adam says, and Spencer nods his agreement.

"That could be fun," Spencer continues, his voice rising at the end, making it sound almost like a question. Except it's not—or at least Patrick doesn't think it is. He thinks that it's more that Spencer can tell that Patrick's motives are not entirely pure, and he's trying to figure out why. After a moment that only seems long, though, he turns to Frank, and Patrick figures that for now, at least, Spencer has decided to let it go.

*

Show three:

Okay, so it's not that Frank hasn't been really fucking excited for every single show they've done thus far, but, okay, he's *really* fucking excited right now. Like, *really* fucking excited.

And Patrick's brain—traitorous thing that it is—takes that in. What they've been practicing: quick notes, loud. Harder, faster. The way Frank is fucking bouncing as he steps up to the mic and says, "Fuck, look at all of you out there. Fucking awesome, dudes." Then, "Well, if you know anything about us, about our band, you'll know that we like to fucking mix things up. With, like, a blender and shit, right? And I know that some of you were probably looking forward to hearing Patrick scream his voice fucking raw, so I'm sorry to disappoint, 'cause I'm the one who's going to be doing the screaming tonight."

There are yells from the crowd at that and Frank continues, "That's what I'm talking about. That is what I'm fucking talking about." Then, "Count us in, Smith." And just like that it's starting.

And oh, it feels fucking weird, right? Because Patrick is used to being center stage, and yet he's not. He's stuck on the right side of the stage, just playing, occasionally (maybe, if he feels like it) doing backing vocals.

They start with a classic, an intro that Patrick nearly loses himself in, and by the time Frank gets to the first repetition of the title, the kids at the front of the crowd are screaming along: "Rise above! We're gonna rise above!" It's a short song, shorter than what Patrick's used to playing, but then every song on their list is. The tempo, however, is faster, and Patrick's sweating by the time they reach the last verse.

From there, with barely a breath in between, it's straight into The Misfit's 'Where Eagles Dare'. Adam starts them out, playing a single chord on the piano, one that slowly grows in volume, overwhelming the room, and then Spencer, Frank, and Patrick start in, all together, all in unison.

Patrick's fingers are moving as fast as he can make them go, but when he turns towards Spencer, in the back corner at his drums, well, the sticks are moving so fast Patrick can't really see anything but a blur. Spencer's biting at his lip, and for the first time since they've been playing together, he's got a tie tied over his head, pulling his lengthening bangs away from his face, and Patrick understands why, as his whole body is bending, jerking with the force with which he's hitting the drums.

Not as many in their audience are as familiar with this song as they were with the first—a fact which Patrick knows Frank will decry later—but the volume of the crowd increases by a factor of ten when Frank reaches the line, "I ain't no goddamn son of a bitch, you better think about it, baby." For the second part of the chorus, Patrick actually steps up to his microphone to join in, and sees Adam doing so on the other side of the stage. "I ain't no goddamn son of a bitch."

They take a break after they wrap that song up with an extended, free-styled ending, long enough for Frank to get a drink of water, for Patrick, Spencer, and Adam to begin to catch their breaths. From there, it's into a series of three songs by groups Frank refers to as the new kids on the scene, despite the fact that most of the *really* new groups in the hardcore punk scene refer to them as the elder statesmen.

Patrick doesn't so much know the words to any of those songs, but the tempos were easy enough to pick up during practice, his notes contrasting well with what Frank's playing, Adam. Midway through song number two, Adam makes his way over to Patrick's side and plays at him—not for the five notes or so that Patrick's used to, before he inevitably has to turn away, back to his mic, but for longer, a whole stanza, two.

Adam's bangs are damp with sweat, catching in his eyelashes, but Patrick's pretty sure that the kid doesn't notice; his eyes are closed, his mouth open as he breathes the words that Frank is shouting, and Patrick would smile, but the music pulls him under again.

From there they move into Minor Threat's "In My Eyes". Patrick, Frank, and Adam spend about thirty seconds flailing around the stage, guitars, heads, and hands moving in unison before Frank has to make it back to his microphone, and Jesus, Patrick thinks, he's going to be really fucking sore tomorrow. Because this is a way that he hasn't played in fucking years, not since he was a teenager with dreams of being in a hardcore band, something that somehow, joining the group with the guy from Arma Angelus, had never turned into.

"You tell me that I make no difference," Frank screams. "At least I'm fucking trying. What the fuck have you done?"

They take a quick breather after that song, then play a few more of Frank's favorites from recent years, and then finally, finally, Frank steps up to the mic and says, "This'll be our last song for the night, so I guess this is where I say thank you for letting some of us indulge our roots tonight. You all fucking *rock*."

He starts playing, just a few notes, just to the point where Patrick and Adam and Spencer should be joining in, and then he stops again. "Oh, and we decided, finally, to let Patrick sing tonight, since he's probably the one you all came out to hear, right? But this is one of my favorite bands; these guys really helped *my* band get it's start and, well. Fuckin' yeah. One, two, three, four." He starts in again, not breaking off again this time, and for the first time that night, really, Patrick finds himself stepping up to his mic with the intention of staying there.

"Five-four-three-two-one," Patrick sings. "Let's start this fire, burn this town from inside out."

Compared to the rest of the songs they've been playing tonight, it's a soft song, although far heavier than anything Patrick played with Fall Out Boy. And this is what he wasn't expecting: for it to actually feel, well, *right* to be standing at the mic again, stuck there, hearing Frank in his ear, singing the back up vocals. He turns partway through the song, just enough to see Frank looking at Spencer, grinning, and whether it's at Patrick or the whole night, Patrick doesn't know, but part of him is pretty sure that he should be mildly offended. Or something.

Instead he just turns to look at Adam, finds the kid looking back at him, and he rolls his eyes, laughing through the next few words of the verse, and, well. Even if Frank and Spencer *are* laughing at him, he can't really complain. This is where he belongs, after all.

*

So, Patrick tries not to work on the song. He really, really does.

The problem he has with songs, though, is that once he starts them, he finds it really fucking hard to, you know, stop. He always faced the exact same thing back when he and Pete were working together: once he got the hook he had to keep going with it, for better or for worse, or else it would always be there in the back of his head, a what if?

But this is not 'back when' and it's not 'the old days', and his relationship with this band is not the same relationship that he had with Fall Out Boy and they're still getting used to each other, to the sorts of shows they're doing, and that does not include Patrick writing songs for them.

So, the day after, after he gets back from Riverside at something like three o'clock in the morning, after he falls into bed and wakes up at nine to a phone call from Pete, a, "Dude. You fucks are really having a good time aren't you?" After Patrick laughs, then winces, because it's been a long time since he screamed his throat raw like he had the night before.

Just, *after*, he takes a look at the staff paper sitting out on the dining room table, ink smudged as the side of his hand rubbed across it while he was writing. He looks and he runs his finger over it one more time, and then he puts it in a drawer and mentally throws away the key. Because that—any songs of his—are not who Reason # 437 are. Or will be. Of that, he's sure.

*

It works for about 48 hours.

Until he wakes up at 5 o'clock on Wednesday morning, the music, the fourth line of the third verse running through his head, the word he'd been trying to reconcile into the established beat suddenly changed to one that *works*, and before he can think better of it, he's rummaging in the drawer of his nightstand, pulling out a notebook, writing it down, jotting down something about notation. And—

And he's tired enough, see, and he's too much a creature of habit, because it's like a key is turned in his brain, everything that he'd been trying to write, everything that he'd been resisting, suddenly flowing, and he can't stop. *Fuck*, he doesn't *want* to fucking *stop*.

He doesn't stop.

He's finished the song by seven, notes transcribed onto staff paper, words scrawled in the spaces between the lines.

He reads it over, hums it.

He brushes his thumb over the corner of the paper, smoothing it out, and says, "Fuck."

  
Set List:  
1) Rise Above-Black Flag  
2) Where Eagles Dare-The Misfits  
3) In My Eyes-Minor Threat  
4) Counting 5-4-3-2-1-Thursday  


  
****

36\. Four Shows (IV)

  
Patrick makes a resolution. It is a firm resolution, an important one. Namely, he resolves not to mention his song to anyone, not Pete or Frank or Spencer or Adam, because mentioning it would lead to playing it, which would lead to admitting that his brain was thinking in Spencer's beats, Frank and Adam's riffs. It would mean acknowledging that he wants to make this into more than they'd originally agreed to making it into, making it even more for real instead of for fun for real.

Basically, see, Patrick's reasoning goes something like this: He likes the status quo.

Also, if he's learned anything about himself in the last 8 months, it's that he can be remarkably good at self-delusion when he wants to be, and if there has ever been a time to consciously embrace that fact, it is now.

So, he doesn't mention the song.

He doesn't mention it that night, when Frank and Spencer and Adam come over to his house for their officially official practice for their next show, three weeks away. He doesn't say a word about it while they're weighing the merits of Diva Night—"Fuck, Stump!" Frank says, "How could you not want to believe in life after love? Can't you just fucking *picture* it?"—versus a 70s theme night—"Disco," Adam says, and the look on his face is so amusingly rapturous that Frank makes a cooing noise, like that's the most precious thing he's ever heard. Which causes AJ to jump him, which leads to Patrick saying, "Hey, fuck. Roll away from the drums, you fucks. *Away from the drums.*"

He doesn't mention it to Pete when they talk on the phone the next night, as he listens to tales of the antics of Pete's newest baby band, one of Ross's finds of course, and had he mentioned the ukulele? Because they had a fucking ukulele player, okay? Pete'd *had* to sign them just for that. And, okay, Patrick might have had more of a problem not mentioning the song except that Patrick remembers listening to those kids' demo. He remembers the ukulele. He says, "Fuck, I know, right?"

He doesn't mention it that weekend, when he drives down to Riverside to eat dinner with Frank and Jamia and Karen at Eduardo's Mexican place. They talk about how Eduardo's sons are setting up the stage by the front window again.

"We started a trend," Frank says. "He's started doing, like, open mic nights. Guitars and tacos, man. Fucking awesome, right?"

One week after he finishes the song, though, his resolve not to mention it fails.

He's talking with Joe of all people on the phone, what the fuck, talking about Diva Night, about Whitney and Cher and Mariah, when Joe, the bastard, asks, "So what, you'd rather sing about, fuck, pieces of Ms. Spears than, like, your own shit? What the fuck, dude?"

And Patrick says, "It's not like I haven't been wr—" It's a natural defense and he breaks off quickly, but Joe knows him as well as anyone else in this world and he's not stupid. He knows how to fill in the blanks on his own, the fucker.

"That's not—" Patrick starts, tries, because he has to say something. Because he can totally play it off, right? He's been writing for the bands he works in the studio with, sure. And yeah, he'd sure as hell rather sing about pieces of Ms. Spears than some of the shit they come up with, right? Ha, ha, fuck.

Joe interrupts him before he can get much farther than that, though, and fuck him, he's totally fucking laughing. A-fucking-lot. Then he says, "Dude, Pete and I totally had a bet going, which of us could get you to admit to it first."

"Fuck you," Patrick says weakly, resigned, because he knows that there's nothing that he can do about it now. Joe will tell Pete—if Pete isn't already in the room listening, the fuckwad—and then Pete will call Frank or Spencer and maybe Rolling Stone, fucking fuck, and wow is his resolution ever fucked.

"Ah, lunchbox, that's no way to talk to your bestest buddy, now is it?"

He's still laughing, though, so Patrick doesn't feel too badly about hanging up on him.

*

Indeed, word travels fast, because when Spencer shows up at Patrick's door that night, Frank and Adam just a few steps behind, he doesn't offer one of his usual greetings: a 'hello' or a 'what the fuck is up' or a 'Brendon told me that if you didn't send me back to Vegas in 24 hours, he was going to fly out here and kick your ass.' Instead he says, "So, I hear there's a new song?"

Patrick nods.

They sit down in his living room, and Patrick's debating telling them all that it's nothing, that he was just fucking around, that it's not really their sound—because they don't even *have* a fucking sound, right? But somehow the words just aren't coming. And while he expects Frank's cackle of glee, he's not expecting the look that Frank gives Adam, part 'I told you so' and part encouragement. Adam pushes his bangs away from his face, and that's when Patrick notices the ink stains on his knuckles.

"As long as we're 'fessing up," Frank says, which makes Spencer snort.

"Fuck off, Smith," Frank says, then continues. "The kid and I have been fooling around a bit with this idea of his for a week or so. We've mainly been fucking around with the words, but he's got some interesting ideas about how the notes should go together, you know?"

"Just a little something," Adam says. "Just—"

"Shut up," Frank continues. "You know it's awesome. Then, to Patrick, "We were going to take it slowly. Ease you into the idea and shit. Smith here told us that we shouldn't worry—"

"Like it wasn't totally obvious you'd started writing again," Spencer says, rolling his eyes. "What with the bags under your eyes and all, and the fact that you didn't want to talk about it."

"—but we didn't want to scare you off."

"Jesus," Patrick says, and thinks that he should be flipping the fuck out. Because he'd started to the last time he'd thought about CDs and writing and singing their own stuff, right after he'd finally admitted they were a band. Because they'd all been totally fine just being a cover band, because they had a good thing going. Because apparently his band thinks that they can still scare him off, when he's worrying that they aren't going to want to move beyond the status quo.

"Fuck," he says, and then he laughs, because— Well, maybe he resigned himself to this moment when he admitted that they were, in fact, a band. Or maybe he's just not letting himself be surprised by anything with regards to this whole thing anymore. Or maybe, just maybe, the little thrill of excitement that they're all apparently (unintentionally) on the same page, that tingle that he can feel building up in his fingers, brain, means that he's ready to move out of denial, onto the next step.

*

But, as much as Patrick would like to pay attention to their two—two!—in progress songs (and they do pay attention to them, some) they have a show the next week, scheduled and advertised as Diva Night. And apparently the venue, some little place down in Ventura, is most of the way to being *sold out*.

The thing is: it seemed like a fucking awesome idea when they originally started bouncing ideas around. It even seemed like a good idea when they first started practicing, singing about your love and my love, you fuck.

"Gerard," Frank had said at the time, "would fucking *kill* to be in on this show, you know?"

It starts to feel like a really fucking *bad* idea about three seconds before they're supposed to actually start playing, though, once they're actually on stage, the lights out. Once he can actually hear the breathing of the people out in the audience, feel their anticipation, because *seriously*, what the fuck do they think that they're doing? They're going to get fucking *laughed off of the stage*, Jesus. But then the light is coming up, and ha, he's stepping up to the mic, and Spencer's tapping out a steady beat behind him.

"Ye-ah, ye-ah, yeah." He sings it a cappella, no backing, and then, as soon as he steps away from the microphone, Spencer brings his sticks down on the drums, hitting them as hard as they can. He starts a heavier beat than the original version of the song calls for, but that's pretty much what the entire night is about: punk takes on diva pop songs. Going all out.

"Always been told that I've got too much pride," Patrick sings. "Too independent to have you by my side." They speed the song up when they hit the first chorus, and Patrick lets his voice climb, crescendo with the guitars.

"Show me love," he sings. "Show me life. Baby, show me what it's all about." They throw in a few guitar solos, Frank nearly bending over backwards on the tiny stage, letting his fingers fly. He doesn't quite fall down, but it's close, and Patrick catches Spencer rolling his eyes as Frank fakes like he's going to fall, then twists around so that he's standing back upright. Off to Patrick's left, Adam plays the piano with that much more force.

They trail off at the end and Frank takes his place at the microphone, saying, "So how does one intro Diva Night? There's really nothing to say is there?" He listens to a few catcalls from the audience, then says, "Okay, well maybe there's a little bit to say. It has not been our grand mission in life to play old school Robyn, or Tina, or Whitney, or Mariah, but way back when, a few months ago, we were sort of joking around, and someone—was it you, Smith?—threw out the idea, and we all thought, fuck, that might actually be sort of fun. So, here we are. Embracing our inner divas. Even if some of our inner divas still wear trucker caps, what the fuck, Stump."

Because Patrick is still wearing his hat. His hoodie is a shiny green metallic material, though, because during their dinner at Eduardo's two and a half weeks before, Jamia had said, "You will not be a diva if you don't sparkle, Stump," and Frank had said, "Listen to my wife, she knows all."

"This is as shiny as I get," Patrick says into the mic, making the crowd laugh, and then, because the last thing he wants to do is actually *talk about this*, he makes a gesture at Spencer, who starts counting them into the next song.

He lets one round of drum beats go through, then he sings, "Bum bum be-dum bum bum be-dum bum." By the time he finishes the first round, some members of the crowd are already singing along, and in the dim lights, he can see kids in gold lamé dresses dancing along with the beat, waving feather boas in the air.

Frank is dancing, too, up on the tips of his toes, bouncing his head along with the beat. He's singing along with what words he knows, looking like he's having a fucking blast—of course, it's not the first time he's played Rihanna on stage; he and Patrick are even there. Spencer's having a good time, too, Patrick can tell; he keeps throwing drum flourishes into the beat, pushing them forward faster, faster. And when he looks at Adam, he sees the kid almost prowling back towards Spencer, his head moving in time with the beat.

"It's a thief in the night," Patrick sings, "to come and grab you. It can creep up inside you and consume you. A disease of the mind, it can control you. It's too close for comfort."

From there, they move into—well, okay, it's an oldie—but the lighting guys start the disco ball, flashing neon lights off of it, which makes the audience scream. Again, they speed it up, adding guitar riffs in places where no riffs should probably go. Frank and Adam stalk around the stage, though, following each other, playing their guitars at each other, and somehow always ending up at some mic or another when the chorus comes around: "What's love got to do with it? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?"

There's a pause when they come to the end, as Frank stands up on tip toes to reach Spencer's mic so that he can say, "Some of you may choose to cover your ears for this next one, or run screaming from the building in horror. Just… enjoy this in the spirit that it was intended, okay? Which is that we're out to have a fucking awesome time tonight. And you all *know* we couldn't do Diva Night without this chick, right?"

"Just be fucking thankful it's not 'My Heart Will Go On'," Spencer says, like this one totally wasn't his idea to begin with. "Right?"

"Fuck!" someone in the audience shouts. Patrick can hear laughter, though, and a few "woo!"s. And see, ha, of all of the songs they're doing tonight, this is the one that Patrick actually wants to end up on YouTube just so that he can get the outraged phone call from Pete, the one where he says things like, "What the fucking fuckity fuck, Stump?" and "Didn't I train you better this?" and "Where the fuck did I go wrong. I must have gone wrong *somewhere*."

Frank had clapped his hands with glee, though, when Spencer had first suggested it, and they'd all spent the next half hour singing off-key Celine Dion lyrics at each other, and really, what's the point of singing the divas if you don't have a good fucking time with it?

Then, in unison, Frank starts playing his guitar in a way that would not be out of place in a Kenny G song, and Adam turns up the synthesizer on the keyboard, and Spencer starts using a brush on his cymbal, and Patrick sings, in his most soulful voice, "A new day has— A new day has—"

The laughter this time is louder, some shouts, some screams, and it's with more confidence that Patrick starts in on the first verse. "I was waiting for so long. For a miracle to come." They play it softly, soft rock-like, until they hit the chorus, and then Frank hits chords and Adam abandons the piano for his bass, and Spencer drops the brush to the floor, picking up his sticks again. Patrick lets an edge creep into his voice a bit as he sings the words: "Let the rain come down and wash away my tears." By the time they actually get to the title, the beat is heavy enough that there could be head banging, and Frank, Patrick sees, is doing so, and then, as he reaches the end of the chorus, he practically growls: "A new day has come."

After that, they head straight into the dance remixes. Whitney first, and Patrick sings, "If your love is my love, and my love is your love," and the lights are going and people are dancing and Adam's coming up to play back to back with Patrick, and Patrick just lets his voice go.

Frank and Spencer keep playing for several stanzas after the song is over, giving Patrick a chance to move away from the microphone, back to where Spencer is. He takes a drink, a deep breath, and lets himself grin widely at Spencer. Then he starts playing his own guitar as he takes the few steps back to the front of the stage, already starting to play, leading the transition into the next song.

The strobes are going again, matching their beats, and Patrick sings, "Baby, I stay in love with you." He repeats the words a few times, then moves into the first verse. "Dying inside, because I can't stand it. Make up, break up, can't take this madness."

From there they move into an Anya song, Patrick singing, "True love like thunder, echoing through me like the beating of my heart," the crowd singing along, arms in the air, and it's midway through that song that Patrick sees the silver feather boa flying through the air, glinting in the flashing lights. He doesn't pick it up until the song is over, until they're taking their breather, and then he bends down, picks it up, wraps it around his neck with a flourish.

Frank takes that moment to step up to the microphone, and say, "Hey now, that's not fucking fair. We are all divas on this stage. Why are *you* the only one to get a boa?"

"Maybe someone would be kind enough to toss you one?" Patrick asks, and oh, he's breathing hard. Maybe Frank knew that. Maybe that's the true reason for the mini-break. As soon as the words leave his mouth, though, he sees several boas flying through the air, and Frank quickly scoops them up. He tosses an orange one to Spencer, a purple one to Adam, keeps the green one for himself.

He leans back towards his mic. "Have I told you all tonight what a fucking awesome crowd you are? Because you are fucking fucking *fucking* awesome, holy fuck."

He might say more, except Spencer chooses that moment to start playing his drums, drawing them into the next song. He starts out with light taps on his snare, then moves into cymbals as Patrick sings, "Cherish, cherish."

Pretty much the entire crowd is singing along by the time Patrick gets to sing, "I cherish the thought of always having you here by my side. Oh, baby, I cherish the joy you keep bringing into my life. I'm always singing it. Cherish the strength. You got the power to make me feel good. Oh baby, I perish the thought of ever leaving. I never would."

From there, they move into the last song. Or, well, the last two songs. It's more of a medley, because they were evenly split on which one they wanted to play. So they went with the easy answer: both.

The great thing about these songs is: there are actual guitar parts. They barely have to punk the things up at all. They *do*, but they wouldn't *have* to if they didn't want to. So, Patrick sings, "Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say, I really don't think you're strong enough." They get through two verses, two choruses, before moving into song number two, the one that they felt it was best to end on.

They replace most of the intro with a transition of their own making, and then—hard to believe that it's almost over already—Patrick sings, "If I could turn back time. If I could find a way, I'd take back those words that hurt you. And you'd stay. If I could reach the stars, I'd give them all to you. Then you'd love me, love me, like you used to do."

Patrick slows it down at the end, savoring each word, and the audience is singing along with him, and fuck, he actually pretty sure that he doesn't want it to end. But end it must, so they finish with a power chord, struck poses, feather boa's swinging through the air, and fuck, it's suddenly loud. Patrick can hear the laughter, the rising voices, the jubilant chatter that fills the venue after a show that the audience has enjoyed just as much as the performers.

The lights are starting to come up of course, of course, because this is where they'd told the lighting guys that they were going to stop. Patrick is thrumming with energy, though, and Frank is still bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, and Spencer is tossing his sticks in the air like he's *waiting* for something, and maybe he is, because he raises an eyebrow at Patrick, an almost challenge, a, 'so?' Then he turns the look at Frank, and before Patrick has a chance to do more than register the look, to rub his hand through his hair in a way that means, 'really?', Adam is sharing that same glance with Spencer, is nodding and stepping up to his mic. He taps it with the tip of his finger until it squeals. Frank hisses loudly, then laughs, saying, "Way to go, kid."

Adam flips Frank off, then clears his throat. Patrick sees him take a quick look in Patrick's direction, but then he turns forward again, staunchly facing the crowd.

"'Scuse me," he says. "Sorry. Fuck. Um. We actually aren't done yet. There's, um, a song that we've been working on—" The longer he talks, even with just these few words, the paler he looks, and so Patrick isn't at all surprised with Frank steps up to his own mic and says, "What the kid's trying to say—right, AJ?—is that we have one more song we'd like to play for you all tonight. We weren't planning on doing this—so be warned, it's going to be fucking *rough*--but you guys are such a fucking awesome crowd—I mean, you gave us fucking *boas*--that we think you deserve some sort of reward. Or, well, we hope it's a reward. Because did I mention the rough?" He steps away from his microphone, then back again after just a moment. "Don't bother trying to sing along. You aren't going to know this one. Hell, we barely know this one." A breath, then "Go ahead and count us in, Stump, a'ight?"

The house lights are still on, and yeah, okay, Patrick is suddenly remembering that he doesn't actually like being able to see his audience, because, well, he can see them *all*. Girls, guys, men, women, all clustered together, staring at him. He thinks, what if they hate it? He thinks, what if they were only here for the crazy covers? He thinks, maybe we weren't meant to be more than a glorified cover band?

He says, "One, two, three, four—" and Spencer starts in on the intro, eight beats, then Frank and Adam are joining in, and before he can think about it anymore, Patrick starts to sing about closed doors and open windows, flashes of light reflecting off of mirrors and the way it all goes around again, again. It's midway through the second stanza that he truly looks at the crowd for the first time and then he wishes that he hadn't because fuck, they *are* all staring at him, lips trying to move along with the words, and for a moment, he feels like he used to, when he was just a punk kid standing on a stage, wondering how the hell he ended up as the singer instead of the drummer, what the fuck, but then he sees AJ doing a spin out of the corner of his eye, Frank dancing along right next to him. He can hear Spencer, steady and there. And then they're done.

Done.

There's a moment of silence as the crowd seems to process what they've just heard, and then there are yells, shouts, clapping hands. Frank is grabbing at Patrick's wrist and pulling him into a bow, and then Spencer is joining them, encouraging them off of the stage, back to the storage area-slash-dressing room.

Adam is the first one to speak. "I think they liked it," he says. His grin belies his lazy tone, though.

"Well why the fuck wouldn't they have?" Frank asks. "We're fucking awesome."

"Fuck yeah," Spencer says. Then he grins at Patrick, raising that damn eyebrow of his again.

"Fuck yeah," Patrick says.

*

It only takes half an hour for Pete to call. Patrick is still driving home and he debates not answering the phone, letting Pete stew, but then he thinks better of it, puts the phone on speaker.

"Hi," he says. He's grinning, anticipating what Pete is going to say.

Which is: "You fuck." He doesn't sound like he's amused, though. He actually sounds a little bit pissed. More than a little bit. "You play a *new fucking song* without giving me a heads up whatsoever? You *know* I would have been in the first fucking *row*, Jesus Christ, Stump."

"I know," Patrick says, and his euphoria fades, just a little. "Fuck, I know, Pete. And if I'd know we were going to play it, I would have told you. You would have been the first one I told. Just—it was a spur of the moment thing. I fucking promise. We were just in the moment and we didn't want it to be over and—"

"The new song just popped out," Pete says. He sounds dry, almost disbelieving, but then he laughs. "Of course it did, because your new songs, the ones you hardly know, *still* sound better than a fuck load of what's on the radio stations these days."

It didn't, Patrick knows it didn't. They had an extra syllable in stanza eighteen, and he'd totally fucked over the rhythm line on the fourth repeat of the chorus, and he'd forgotten the last word of the second line of the fourth verse, but it could have gone a lot worse.

"Oh, stop it," Pete says, finally amused. "It sounded awesome and you know it. It's already gotten 20 hits on YouTube. Granted, 15 of those were me and Joe, unable to believe that our fucking *brother* would debut new music without running it by us first, but, you know. People are going to ooh and ah." Then he laughs out loud, a wheezing sound. "You realize that there's no turning back from this, Stump. I'm sending out contracts to you four tomorrow, because there's no way I'm letting anyone else release your CD—and don't even fucking tell me there's not going to be one, because I believe we've been through this argument before in terms of, you know, you being in the fucking band, and you writing music, and all that shit."

Patrick doesn't try to protest. There will be a CD. It may still seem slightly unbelievable to him, but honestly, he'd be more surprised now if they *didn't* release one at some point.

There's a pause then, and for a moment Patrick thinks that Pete has just been struck speechless by his easy capitulation.

Then Pete laughs again, and says, "Now onto the important matters of business. Patrick Stump, I am ashamed. I don't know where I went wrong in raising you. Because seriously? Fucking 'A New Day Has Come'? Really?"

Patrick smiles.

"You'd better fucking believe it," he says. "Too bad I didn't have the boa then, right?"

"Fuck," Pete says, and yeah, Patrick thinks, that about sums it up.

Set List:  
1) Show Me Love-Robyn  
2) Disturbia-Rihanna  
3) What's Love Got To Do With It?-Tina Turner  
4) A New Day Has Come-Celine Dion  
5) My Love is Your Love-Whitney Houston  
6) I Stay in Love With You-Mariah Carey  
7) Cherish-Madona  
8) Believe-Cher  
9) Turn Back Time-Cher  



	11. Snapshots from a Possible Future [37-40]

37\. The Album

  
It's fucking weird, is what it is, because Patrick's used to doing this whole writing songs thing a certain way, you know? He's used to working with Pete in hotel rooms halfway around the world, guitars balanced on their knees, the two of them sitting on bedspreads with patterns lurid enough that the ink smudges they end up leaving behind blend right in.

Or more recently, when he's been composing songs for other bands, he's grown accustomed to working in his basement, sitting at the drum stool, or on one of the bean bag chairs, or even just on the floor, letting the notes trickle out in fits and starts, until he's too far along to think about turning back.

The one constant, though, is that *he* has always been the one to bring the words and notes together. That is what he does; it's who he is.

*This*, though.

See, *this* is Frank and Adam sitting across the room from him, guitars balanced on *their* knees, playing something that could very well end up being one of their group's songs, and it's something that Patrick has had no hand in creating whatsoever. *This* is Frank clapping the kid on the shoulder when they're done, even as he looks over at Patrick and Spencer, saying, "Fucking awesome, right?"

And it is.

The thing is, though…

The thing is, Patrick almost wishes that it wasn't.

He almost wishes that he could say that it needed x, y, or z. That the bridge needed work, or that the chorus didn't mesh at all, or a hundred other things, because then they could take a step back towards his comfort zone, where he and Pete were the ones to get the music started, the rest of the guys coming in to flesh the songs out. He wouldn't be sitting here, feeling like… this.

But Frank's had just as much experience writing with a band as Patrick's had, maybe more, and he's learned all of those tricks that Patrick learned too, and the lyrics that Adam came up with are catchy, about showing the people that left you behind that they were fucking idiots—yeah, the kid is totally channeling there—and the words are put together in a way that Patrick never would have considered, and… And it works.

It really fucking works.

So, just a breath after Frank finishes asking the question, Patrick says, "Fuck yeah it's awesome," and Adam ducks his head, hair flopping down like a curtain he's trying to hide behind. Patrick's pretty sure that he can still see Adam's flush through the orange and black streaks of his bangs, though.

*

And, see, song number three isn't Patrick's either, and it isn't Frank and AJ's, and it's not Spencer coming to their practice the next week with a song set entirely to drums or something like that.

No, it's all of theirs, because while Spencer's the one who has a line of chorus—very Beach Boys-esque, which is so totally Spencer it fucking hurts—Frank is the one to start developing verses. His enthusiasm is contagious, because pretty soon Patrick and Adam are talking over each other, sharing their ideas, and the next thing Patrick knows, they've got the basic outline of a song. They've got a chorus and three verses that are more done than not and they're all laughing, trying to set them to different musical styles: country, death metal, bubblegum pop.

It's around the time that Frank and Adam start leaping around Patrick's basement, head banging as hard as they can while still playing, that Patrick realizes they're probably done for the night.

*

So that's song number three, and as he looks at the finished product, all Patrick can remember is an interview (or five) where he'd said things like: *I can't even imagine trying to write with the whole band—that would take for-fucking-ever, you know?*

But.

And okay, song number four is one that he and Adam write the words to—pure pop this time around, churned out over three lunches at the studio—and Spencer's the one to develop the musical hook, picking out the notes on Patrick's piano. It's got that show tune musicality that Panic perfected.

And song number five is a mesh of Frank's scream-o roots with a bit of Patrick's R&amp;B stylings. It's a duet—has to be, because there's no way Patrick's going to be able to make his voice do the things that Frank's can do, not without knocking himself out of commission for several days. And—

Yeah.

*

And so, four weeks into this apparent 'album writing process,' Patrick's finally starting to get used to this brand new world, where the writing really *is* a whole band activity. Which, of course, is when Frank shows up at Patrick's with a sheepish look on his face. As sheepish a look as Frank ever gets, anyway.

Before Patrick can ask what's going on though, Frank hands him a folded sheet of paper on which Patrick can see scrawled words in a familiar handwriting.

"Fuck," Frank says, shaking his head. He runs his fingers over his purple tinged faux-hawk. "Gerard, you know. He said if we were accepting material, you know?"

And see, this is one thing Patrick hasn't done before.

He has never, ever sung a song on one of his albums that he (or his band mates, he guesses now) didn't write. Not that there's anything wrong with doing that; some of his favorite people in LA are songwriters, people who much prefer to stay behind the scenes. He's certainly worked with singers who've sung albums full of songs written especially for them. Hell, it's not like *he* hasn't written songs for other people! That's just… never been for him, or any of the groups on Pete's label, the ones he cut his production teeth working with.

"Not that we have to use it," Frank says. The thing about Gerard, though, is that he's really fucking talented, and he's a good judge of what will work and what'll be appropriate, and, well.

Reading the words, Patrick is already hearing kernels of a melody around the edges of his thoughts.

So that's song number six.

*

And once word makes it's way through their group of friends that they accepted a song from Gerard, they start to get more submissions. First Patrick gets an email from Ryland and Gabe, the attached song entitled 'A Very Serious Song Which Patrick Must Sing.' Then Travis writes him a rap, and William and Alex the Singer write half a song on napkins from a Denny's in the middle of Nebraska, where they're in the middle of a tour of folk art festivals.

Most of them are jokes, words that are fun to sing through once, laughing too hard to actually be on key.

Ryan's song isn't a joke, though.

No, the Monday of the seventh week since they began to write this album in earnest, Ryan Ross shows up at the studio with a yellow mailing envelope in hand, one that's addressed to Patrick.

"I had some ideas," he says, like that explains it all, and maybe it does.

Patrick starts to open the envelope right there, but Ryan shakes his head and says, "No, no. I just—fuck. If you want to use any of it, you know? You can. Spence should, ha, be able to read my writing. Probably."

He shuts the door behind him when he leaves, at which point Patrick really does open the envelope.

There are five sheets of paper, classic Ryan Ross, literary and dense, words trailing away into images that are not things Patrick would ever come up with on his own, not even after having known Pete for almost two decades.

And it's not something that Patrick would ever actually think of singing himself. But, it is something that Spencer would have helped write music for in the past, something that's part of his style, and this band—

This band really is about more than the four of them. It's their histories, their roots, a trip into complete self-indulgence, which is why Patrick will get his rap song, why Frank will get to scream. It's why there will be trips into the recesses of Gerard's mind, why Ryan's song will be number seven in their arsenal, why there will be a veer into the traditional alt rock sound that saturated the airwaves for too many years, because that's what Adam grew up on.

Because they, as a band, don't have a sound, per se. They don't have a box they fit into. And really? Patrick's pretty sure that he likes it that way.

  
****

38\. The Studio (II)

  
So, um.

So Patrick is actually sort of nervous. Just a little bit. Just enough to wake him up at six o'clock in the morning and keep him staring at the fucking ceiling until his alarm goes off at eight, repeatedly telling himself that he is not, in fact, nervous, because it's not like he doesn't spend every fucking day of his life in a studio or anything like that.

Still, he gets up when his alarm goes off instead of slamming the snooze button three times like he usually does. He eats a banana, drinks a cup of coffee. He picks his clothes up off the floor, tossing them in the hamper, and starts his dishwasher. He sits down and turns on the TV, some morning show, something he has no interest in listening to, and he tries not to fidget.

He's relieved when the clock on the TV flips to 9:00, because 9:00 means that he can leave and tell himself (or anyone who asks why he's there early) that he wanted to give himself plenty of time, just in case there was traffic. Because no one wants to be late on the first day of recording, right?

Right.

Which, he's pretty sure later, is when he jinxes himself, because it takes him an *hour and a half* to go about ten miles. There's an accident somewhere, nowhere he's even close to, but oh fuck, he's feeling the effects.

So, he's late. He rushes into the studio red-faced and saying, "Fuck, fuck, sorry," and of course the rest of his band is already there, so they laugh at him. Because that's the sort of thing that they do. And it's only after he's had a chance to catch his breath, put his stuff down, that he takes a moment to look around.

The studio waiting area is a nice one: roomy, framed tour posters from the '60s hanging on the walls, a potted leafy something or other taking over one of the corners. He's worked in similar spaces over the years—he wants to say thousands, but he knows that that would be an extreme exaggeration—and it feels comfortable. In a way. In the way that any studio that's *not* Patrick's can feel comfortable these days.

Rob comes out to meet them about a minute after Patrick shows up, and then he's showing them the way back to the practice spaces, which, okay, *does* feel weird. It's been a long time since Patrick has spent a significant amount of time in a part of the studio other than the sound booth.

He follows Rob and Spencer down the hall, though, with Frank and Adam trailing behind. Frank is babbling away, his tone of voice probably intended to provoke the kid into some sort of response, but AJ seems to be far more focused on trying to absorb *everything*.

Patrick remembers those days.

Those were good days, if Patrick does say so himself. He's pretty sure that Pete, Joe, and Andy would all probably agree.

So, they go into the practice room, and Patrick knows this, too. The mandatory sit-down with the producer when all you want to do is get behind the instruments and fucking play, to get this fucking party started. Patrick thinks that he should probably appreciate Rob's position more, given what Patrick does for a living now, but, well, it's really fucking easy to slip back into the musician mentality. Rob really *does* need to know what their vision for the album is, though. He needs to know how they plan to create flow between the divergent musical genres.

So, they talk and Rob listens, and then Rob talks and they listen, and it takes fucking hours, or feels like it does, before they finally get to break out the instruments, to show Rob what they're bringing him to work with. Of course, he already knows some of it. Patrick only knows of Rob by his (good) reputation, but Pete's worked with him before, with other bands. He wouldn't have sent Patrick to him if Rob wasn't the absolute best person for the job.

There's a light in Rob's eyes after they're done playing through the 12 songs that they've chosen to put on the album and it's a look that Patrick recognizes: anticipation. Yes, he can work with this. Yes, he can make this happen. It's rather gratifying to see, actually, because the only people outside of the four of them who've heard more than a song or two—namely, Pete, Jamia, and Ryan—can't be considered objective in any way, shape, or form. Oh, Patrick trusts them to give honest opinions, but even they would acknowledge that they're more than a little biased.

And so, when Patrick gets home that day, the ten miles only taking half an hour this time, he actually feels good about this whole thing. Better than he has yet, actually, now that it finally seems to have moved beyond the cusp of possibility and firmly into reality.

*

Patrick remembers how years ago, when they were recording Folie a Deux, Pete pretty much had to learn evasive driving tactics to lose the paparazzi before he came anywhere within five miles of the studio they were working in. Patrick really, really doesn't miss those days. At all.

It's really nice to be able to leave his house at 9:30 and be there by ten. It's nice to be able to go out for lunch and not have to worry that there are going to be photographers lurking near by, ready to leak the news to the world that Reason #437 is in the studio, recording. That the rumored album, the one that Pete Wentz has mentioned wanting in more than a few interviews—albeit, not since Patrick told him that he actually was going to get his wish—is actually going to happen.

And, okay, there are parts about recording that Patrick hasn't missed at all. The repetitiveness, for instance. How the person in the sound booth has the power to ask you to do the song again. And again. And fuck you, Rob, fucking *again*. Even when you're about eighty steps beyond tired and you're edging towards that place where you never want to talk, much less sing, ever again.

On the other hand, it feels more than a little bit like coming home, to be in the studio, singing. To be able to look to someone else for feedback rather than be the one that's expected to give it. And it feels more natural as the week goes on.

The thing that makes this whole experience different is that there are no deadlines that they're working on. They haven't paid for three weeks of studio space and three weeks only, and they have to be done by five o'clock on day 21 or their record company is going to come yell at them. And it's not like Pete is going to send them back to the studio if he doesn't like the results of their labor. Not when he spent seven weeks asking for "more, more, come on, Stump, you can't fucking leave me hanging like this, dude. It's fucking cruel and unusual punishment. Fuck you."

So, it's more relaxed.

*

For instance, the day that Patrick goes to record his almost-rap?

Adam sneaks into the sound booth and starts beat boxing. At least that's what Patrick assumes he's doing, given that he has his hand cupped over his mouth, and seems to be doing an Eminem-style dance, with occasional raising-the-roof hand gestures thrown in. Patrick manages to get through most of his song without laughing. He has less luck on the second run-through, when Spencer and Frank join Adam, trying to act even more gangsta, and—

Yeah.

The third time Patrick tries the song, Rob suggests that he think about turning around to face the wall. Possibly. Unless Patrick has plans to usher in a new era of laugh-backed hip-hop?

He nails take number four. Then has to do it five more times, before Rob is satisfied that they've got enough footage to mix together.

*

And then there's the time when Frank decides it'd be really awesome to switch out the demo of Ryan's song that Adam uses as a cue while recording his own parts with the soundtrack to the *Lion King*. So, when Adam gets ready to play his sparse, un-Disney-influenced chords, he instead gets 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight?'

And Adam, proving that he really does belong in this group with the rest of them, immediately switches gears and starts to play along. While singing in a slightly off-key, mournful voice.

*

And then there's the time during week three when they're working on song number nine. Spencer and Adam may have been the ones to get the lyrics together, but while writing the music, it somehow became Patrick's baby, with more focus on the instrumentation than anything else he—or they—have written recently.

While Patrick has a very clear idea of how exactly this song is supposed to sound in his head, though, it's just not coming together the way he wants it to. And then he's the one to ask everyone else to do their parts fifteen times, and he does the vocal parts another few times on top of that. And Rob keeps putting it together, keeps tweaking it, but it's just not *right*.

By the time they finally leave at two o'clock the next morning, Patrick wants to punch something, and he's pretty sure that the rest of the guys want to punch him, and he hasn't missed this part either. Because it doesn't seem to matter how not-stressed, how organic the process has been overall, it wouldn't be a recording session without the members of the group getting so mad at each other they never want to talk to each other again.

But while Patrick goes to bed so frustrated that he's literally shaking with it—and that he *does* remember from albums past—he's forgotten the middle of the night epiphanies that usually follow. This one happens at 5:30, when he's got Adam's part running through his head. On one of the takes he'd taken the chord change up instead of down, a riff on the original, and maybe that's what's been missing, the unexpected chord change, and if they went with that, and Frank and Patrick followed suit with their guitar chords, they could—

He stops for coffee on the way into the studio, enough for his guys, Rob, the sound techs that had to listen to them go at each other the day before. Patrick will never apologize for being a perfectionist, not when that is the reason he's as good at what he does as he is, but he still sounds a little hesitant to his own ears when he says, "So, I'm sure that after yesterday none of you ever want to fucking hear this song again, but I had a thought—"

His group mates would have been well within their rights to roll their eyes at him, or threaten to kick him out of the studio, because they must have heard that line come out of his mouth about 25 times the day before. They don't, though, and when Patrick explains what he's thinking, they nod and give it a try.

It may take them another four takes to get it, and it may not be what Patrick was originally thinking, but in the end, he's also pretty sure that this is better.

*

And then there's the time that Frank and Spencer are just playing around in the studio, wasting time while Patrick lays down his guitar tracks. He's getting ready to go through them again, *again*, when Adam sticks his head into the room and says, "Sorry, sorry, but you've really got to hear this."

So, Patrick follows him into the sound booth and nods for Rob to switch the speaker in the practice room on, and—

\--and it's fucking—

Frank and Spencer are just jamming. It's obvious that there's no real sense as to where the music's going, but it's one of those musical creations that only happens when the people that are playing know each other's styles well enough to be able to make the leader indistinguishable from the follower, to be able to transfer control of the song seamlessly.

Patrick is glad to look down and see that the red record light on the soundboard is lit. He doesn't know when it was pressed, whether it was Rob or Adam, but he wants this. He wants a recording of this—to use sometime, or build off of in the future.

And so he, Adam, and Rob just listen, until Spencer finally looks up from his drums for long enough to see that they're being watched. At which point he trails off, Frank only a beat behind him. Frank sticks his tongue out at them, says, "You done with your parts already, Stump?"

Rob looks over his shoulder at Patrick. He switches on his mic so that Frank and Spencer can hear him, too. "I think you've got your intro. Or possibly an interlude? You *know* that has to be on the album."

He's right. It does.

*

And then one day, four weeks and three days after their first in-studio meeting with Rob, they're done.

They're working on song number 12, which is actually song number one, the one they performed on Diva Night, when they just weren't ready to leave the stage yet. It will eventually be track number three on the album, and it goes smoothly—three takes of the drums, four of the bass and guitars, five of Patrick's vocals. And this is what Patrick's been wanting, right? To not have to repeat everything until he's sick of it.

But when Rob nods and says, "Okay then. I think that's it!" Patrick's not ready for it. He's not ready for this to be over, because having it be over means that they're ready for the next step: admitting that the album is done. That it's ready to go. That the rest of the world will know this is no longer quite as just-for-fun as it's been in the past. And Patrick's not sure that he's fucking ready for that.

But they're done, and it's up to Rob to get everything polished now, and when they leave the studio—at 4:30 in the afternoon—none of them are quite sure what to do with themselves.

So they do the only logical thing: drive the hour and a half to Riverside, so they can eat tacos at Eduardo's. They go through four bowls of chips and salsa and pick up a case of shitty beer at the liquor store a few blocks from Frank's house, and then they proceed to get happy-drunk in Frank's backyard, laughing and talking until Jamia tells them to move the party inside so the neighbors can get some sleep. It's close to three in the morning, just as Patrick's getting ready to pass out on Frank's couch, that he texts Pete.

He writes: *done*

It takes approximately thirty seconds for Pete to call Patrick back.

"Dude," Pete says, and Patrick says, "Yeah."

Because he can't really think of anything else to say.

Possibly because there *is* nothing else for him to say.

**39\. The End**

  
Under Pete's direction, DecayDance has become nearly legendary in it's album promotion gimmicks. There have been the puzzles scattered across the Internet, the mix-tape albums, the secret code that the TAI and Gym Class Heroes guys ended up creating to announce their joint venture back in '12. Pete's created scavenger hunts, virtual, real, and those that have required people breaking out the GPS to get to the necessary destinations.

Patrick's also pretty sure that Pete's already devising a subtle hint driven campaign to announce this new CD. He hasn't mentioned anything to Patrick, but he's Pete. He doesn't have to.

Patrick isn't Pete, though. And this—

Reason No. 437 isn't a big-name band. They don't have any platinum records (although between them, they've certainly sold more than their fair share) and beyond the curiosity factor, he can't see many reasons for the rest of the world to care.

So the announcement comes at it's own time, which happens to be as they're playing a show at the Seraglio, a little place out in Riverside, little more than a stage and a floor and a bar at the back.

There are more feather boas this time around—apparently it's becoming the thing to throw on the stage at their concerts—and Frank and Adam each asked for one before they were two songs into the set. Patrick's waiting awhile; he's too warm and sweaty already, and the thought of having fake feathers around his neck for anything longer than their last song is enough to make him shudder.

Particularly because they're having a Ska-influenced night, for which throwing yourself around the stage (and floor) is practically mandatory. Frank and AJ have already had one collision back near the drums, and Patrick's had to stop the show for a few minutes twice, to break the momentum of the crowd on the floor. The venue's not big enough to have more than two security guards and the people up near the stage are getting just a little bit too into things.

But they start off with the 'The Impression That I Get' by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and they play some Sublime in the middle, and they finish up with Reel Big Fish's 'Sell Out' and—

It's only appropriate, Patrick thinks, after he sings, "The record company's going to give me lots of money, and everything's going to be all right," to say, "So, um." He looks at the rest of his guys, and they know him well enough to know what he's going to say. Spencer nods, and Frank grins, and Adam bounces up and down on the balls of his feet, just a little.

"So, we're going to do one more song for you," Patrick says. "This one's off of our upcoming album, yet to be titled—"

"I told you months ago," Frank interrupts. "We're calling it 'Still Falling for that Disco Romance.'"

"—*yet to be titled*," Patrick says again, more loudly, talking over Frank, which causes Frank to flip him off. "But already recorded—"

And there's some shouting then. More than a few screams.

"—which will be available for purchase at some point in the near future, and, well, we hope you enjoy."

Judging by the screams they get when they finish the song, Patrick's pretty sure that they do.

*

It is possible that Patrick's learned his lesson, or that Pete has finally managed to train him, or that he realizes that this really *is* Pete's business, because about three minutes after they leave the venue, Patrick's on the phone.

Pete mumbles his hello, sounding like he was asleep. Patrick feels badly about waking him, but not badly enough to want to deal with a pissed off Pete calling him at 4 o'clock in the morning instead, bitching him out for not making sure that Pete knew this very important news as soon as it was news.

"So, I announced the album tonight," Patrick says, without preamble.

He hears Pete's breath catch on the other end of the phone line. Then he sigh-laughs, and Patrick can just picture him shaking his head. "Fuck, Stump," he says. "I had fucking *plans*, you know. They involved secret shows, media invites. We were going to make a *splash*."

"I opted for the ripple," Patrick says. "People waved their boas in appreciation."

It takes a moment, but Pete finally says, "We are so making boas part of your official merch on your tour," at which point Patrick is pretty sure that he's forgiven.

*

He knows it when he gets home and sees a new post on Pete's blog:

*the word is out. look4 the new Reason#437 album, comng from dd recrds soon. then u 2 can listin on rpt for dayzat a time.*

There are 42 comments when Patrick goes to bed. There are 367 when he gets up in the morning. He doesn't read any of them.

*

So, he knows that he's forgiven, except for the part where payback is a bitch, because it's not even 24 hours later that Patrick gets an email with a list of media requests, everyone from Rolling Stone to Ryan Seacrest to the Today Show—

"The Today Show?" Adam asks, eyes going wide in a way they haven't for months. Like he's just remembering who exactly he's in a group with. And it's not just a guy that he met at work and all of that guy's friends.

"We're a fucking super group," Frank says. "Although a slightly less random one than a few of the others from recent years. Who knows: we could end up being the new Traveling Wilburys."

"That's sacrilege," Spencer says.

"Also, you know that *they* didn't get their start playing covers in fucking George Harrison's basement," Patrick says.

\--and that is how, three weeks later, they end up having breakfast with a reporter from *Spin* on Monday, lunch at Patrick's studio with another from *Alternative Press* on Tuesday, and have a reporter from *Rolling Stone* following them around Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Honestly, Patrick is still used to this. He's worked with enough big name bands that he gets more than a few interview requests. Usually they're phone interviews, though. Background information on past or upcoming albums. Generic quotes about how it was his privilege to work with the group, really, no really, and how big their new sound is going to be. It's been a long time since the article's been focused on him, though.

And really, the first breakfast is fine. The reporter asks the questions Patrick is expecting: How did their group get together? Have they remained friends all this time? Now Adam, how'd you get lucky enough to get in on this? What's your background? Why covers?

They talk about Pete's party, just a little over a year ago now, and how Patrick and Spencer had reconnected there. They talk about Frank moving to Riverside to help Jamia get her new shop started. They talk about jamming in Patrick's basement, about the first charity show, about Patrick's total stubborn oblivion.

Even the lunch is fine, although they pretty much have the exact same conversation with this reporter that they had with the first one.

It's when the reporter from Rolling Stone comes to stay that Spencer finally loses it. Not in front of the reporter, thank fuck, or their first headlines probably would have been about them being ego-driven stars just looking for another way to make money, ten years after their glory days.

Still, when Spencer brings the reporter back to Patrick's studio from a drive around the Los Angeles hills, he steps into Patrick's office, closes the door, and mouths, "Save me."

"Why?" Patrick asks, and Spencer walks across the floor to sit in the chair in front of Patrick's desk.

"She's sneaky," Spencer says. Then he shakes his head and pinches at the bridge of his nose, laughing at himself. "She lulls you into false sense of security and the next thing you know, you're telling her your life story. And the life stories of all of your guys. And she just—" He trails off.

"Yeah," Patrick says. Because Rolling Stone always does those sorts of stories. The in depth ones, always looking for the chinks in your armor, that sign that maybe you don't really love this life as much as you should, that hidden story that maybe none of the other magazines were able to get out of you.

The reporter is with Adam now—and suddenly Patrick's wondering if that was such a bright idea, scheduling the kid's individual interview before Patrick had had a chance to do his own—but Patrick had thought he'd probably be a better choice to entertain the reporter for dinner. Frank gets to give her a tour of The Ragged Nest in the morning.

Indeed, when Adam drops the reporter off at Patrick's office an hour and a half later, he looks a little shell-shocked. And maybe, Patrick thinks, that is the reason that Spencer had stuck around after his own interview, instead of taking out of there as soon as he was free from the reporter's clutches; maybe he'd seen this coming.

So, basically, Patrick's feeling more than a tickle of dread when he and the reporter leave for dinner. She asks where he wants to go, and he's pretty sure that she's expecting him to mention some trendy LA place, someplace that you pretty much have to be famous to get into at all.

He drives them to the bistro that he and Ryan used to meet at for lunch semi-regularly, although that routine has tapered off considerably now that they aren't the only two DecayDance alumni in the LA area any longer. The restaurant's menu has a little more depth at dinner than during the lunchtime rush, and Patrick opts for a vegetarian Panini instead of his regular salad.

And Spencer's right: she is sneaky. She starts subtly, talking about the restaurant, how she's never been here before. Does Patrick come here often? Oh, so he and Ryan used to meet for lunch? How many of Ryan's bands has Patrick produced again? And what does Ryan think of Patrick and Spencer working in a band together? Oh, he wrote one of the songs for the album? Who else wrote songs for the album? Wow, that's quite a lineup! So all of your band mates have been supportive of this venture?

Patrick was rarely the talker in Fall Out Boy—he usually tried to leave that to Pete and Joe—but wow, he just keeps talking tonight. He doesn't say more than he means to say, but it's probably closer than he'd like to admit. And the reporter is charming throughout, genuinely interested in what he has to say, never seems to be *looking* for the story.

She smiles as Patrick drops her off at her hotel, thanks him for a lovely evening. Patrick drives two blocks before pulling over in a 7-11 parking lot so that he can call Frank.

"Yo," Frank says. "You survive?"

"Barely," Patrick says. "I just wanted to give you a heads up that you'll need to watch out. She's deadly."

"So Spencer and AJ said," Frank says. "Although I don't really think the kid has enough experience to judge yet. He said she got him talking about his old band."

Patrick raises his eyebrow at that. He knows the basics of what happened with Adam's previous band, after all. How they'd gone on tour, how they'd had their EP, and then—

"His previous band mates are fuckwads," Frank says, with enough vehemence that Patrick thinks he's now heard more of the story than Patrick has. "But if they weren't, he probably wouldn't have ended up in your studio, needing a job, so maybe we should send them a fruit basket or something? Or possibly an autographed copy of our CD?"

"Or both," Patrick says, which makes Frank laugh. "I like the way you think, Stump!"

*

So, it's a mini-blitz, those media outlets that don't want to get accused of ignoring their band if they actually do end up becoming something more than a novelty act, and then it quiets down again.

Only in that way, though, because the next week, Pete sends him a list of venues that he's lined up for them to play at. Three months on the road, 52 shows, and Patrick would say, 'You've got to be fucking kidding me!' except that, well. The thought of getting back out on the road, seeing the country through bus windows, well.

It's actually sort of exciting, is what it is. And 52 shows in 90-something days is a lot lighter schedule than he used to do. Also, Pete and Ryan conspired to get them support from The Aqua Angels and The Atomic Turtles, and members of both of the bands keep dropping by Patrick's studio to tell him how excited they are for this, no seriously, Patrick can't even imagine. Which, actually, he can.

Especially when he gets word of the first sold out show, the one in Pennsylvania of all places. It took a day and a half. The second show comes two days later, in Nebraska. And then it's a deluge of news, as if people suddenly realized they might not have a chance to get a ticket if they didn't get one *now*.

On the afternoon they hear about the 30th sold out show, they're meeting for practice at The Gateway, so that they can get used to the size of stage that they're going to be playing on for the next three months.

"What the fuck," Patrick says, when Pete texts him the news. "No, seriously. We've put all of what, *one* of our own songs out there? People have only heard us play covers!"

"Which we are obviously fucking awesome at," Frank says.

"But still!" Patrick says. Because, really.

*

And then they're a week out from the album release, and the magazine articles start hitting the newsstands. They don't get the cover on *Rolling Stone* or *Spin*, but they do get a small picture box on the cover of *Alternative Press*, with the caption, 'The Summer Tour You've Got To See To Believe!'

By the time Patrick opens the first magazine, he's already tensed up, waiting for the first glaring inaccuracy to appear in print, somehow sure that they're going to be painted in an unflattering light, as pathetic stars trying to reclaim their former glory. He sees Spencer and Frank looking just as tense, just as ready to slam the magazines shut and spend the next hour laughing off the stories, until Pete posts a cryptically outraged blog post about how the media just doesn't know a good thing when it sees it.

When he looks at Adam, though, he sees the rapt look on the kid's face, the too-wide eyes, like he just can't quite believe what he's reading. And Patrick does understand that. His name, in print. His picture listed as being someone to watch. The fact that people would buy magazines just to read about him, his band. It still occasionally seems unbelievable.

It's only a moment later, though, that Adam's eyes narrow into something of a cringe and Patrick immediately looks to see what magazine he's looking at. Rolling Stone, of course. So Patrick opens that one, flips to the marked page.

Despite the fact that they didn't get the cover, they did get a five-page picture and article combo. And apparently a box, all about Adam. Where he tells about his old band, The Still Wanderers. About how they'd grown up together, playing music in his friend's grandmother's garage. About everything Patrick had known already, and then about how they'd come back triumphant from their summer tour only for the other three members of the band to tell Adam that his presence was no longer needed, that they wanted to take their music in a different direction than Adam supported. Which, Patrick guesses, is what Adam always meant when he said things like, "and now here I am."

"Fuckwads," Frank says again, quietly, as if knowing exactly what Patrick is thinking, and Patrick nods. But maybe Patrick should be thanking them? Because Frank is right: if they hadn't been fuckwads, they might have kept Adam, and if they'd kept Adam, he probably wouldn't have ended up in Patrick's studio, or in this band, and Patrick and Frank might never have moved beyond fucking around on guitars in Patrick's basement.

Patrick might have spent most of a six-month period fighting against acknowledging he was actually in a new band, but sitting here, now, with this group, a CD and a tour on the horizon, he really doesn't want to be anywhere else.

And maybe that's the ending that he's been building towards, all this time.  


  
****

40\. The Beginning

  
Except for, you know, how it's *not* the end, because the CD is coming out and one week after that little milestone, they've got their national tour kicking off in LA. Also, Patrick still has to finish up everything at the studio so that he can take an extended leave of absence, and then there's the fact that he's pretty much forgotten how to pack for three months on a bus. They've got two for this trip--one for Patrick and Spencer, one for Frank and Adam--but half a bus is still smaller than Patrick cares to remember.

And also, you know, on top of everything else, they have to practice.

By the end of Fall Out Boy's run, Patrick had pretty much been able to play all of their songs in his sleep. Not so for Reason No. 437.

The songs are all new, even the covers that they're doing. Also, the show that they're putting together now just *feels* different than the little ones they've been playing for the last several months. Probably because they know people are paying more than a cover charge to get in. Also, they actually have a stage that they need to *set up*. They have techs that need to learn the ins and outs of their instruments. They have transitions to perfect.

Five days out, Patrick thinks they might actually make it; two days out, he's sure that they won't. The day of the first show, company starts descend. Because of course *no one* is going to miss this performance.

Pete and Joe are the first to arrive, flying in from Chicago at some god-awful hour in the morning. Pete excuses Patrick from picking him up at the airport, but that's small comfort, as they show up at Patrick's house at an hour that Patrick still prefers to believe doesn't exist.

Pete, being Pete, ignores Patrick's bleary grumpiness and just fucking *hugs* Patrick until Patrick croaks and says, "Air. I need fucking *air*, Wentz." Pete reluctantly disengages himself, but then it's Joe's turn, and he slaps Patrick's back hard enough that Patrick's pretty sure there's going to be a bruise there the next day.

"Dude," Joe says, shaking his head when he finally pulls back from his own hug, wiping a fake tear away, probably pretending he's a proud parent or some such shit.

"Dude?" Patrick says.

"Dude," Joe says.

Originally, Patrick had tried to discourage Pete and Joe from coming in so early, but it's only an hour later that he decides that he's glad they're there, because they totally take over airport duty, letting Patrick, Frank, and Spencer do their final run-throughs of the show without having to worry about keeping everyone entertained.

Of course, that also means that by the time they're done with their final tweaks, the very small Gateway green room is full of former band mates, waiting to pounce on them. Fall Out Boy had always liked to have an active green room, to be able to hang out with their friends until it was time to get down to serious performing business. This, though, feels a little more overwhelming.

In the middle of the room, Brendon's talking to Gerard. Off to one side, Ray, Joe, and Andy are doing something that involves head banging. Bob and Ryan are talking very seriously in the corner. And the kids in the Aqua Angels and the Atomic Turtles—because of course they're there, too—are just fucking eating it up.

There's a moment of silence as they all come in, and then their respective former band mates are crowding around them, hugging them, shouting greetings, all so fucking excited to be here with them.

And so it goes.

It's about an hour and a half before they're supposed to take the stage, about ten minutes before Patrick needs to begin his vocal warm-ups, that Pete comes over to where Patrick's been sitting on the couch, talking to Bob, and plops down next to him. He drops his arm over Patrick's shoulders, then pulls him into a quick hug. They sit there silently for a few moments and then Pete says, "Look at this. Your band, man."

And Patrick looks: Adam's hanging out with the kids in the Aqua Angels, making the sort of hand motions that make Patrick think they're probably discussing cowbells. He sees Frank riding around the room on Ray's back, high-pitched laughter audible even over everyone else's voices. He sees Spencer getting attacked by Ryan and Brendon with makeup brushes while Jon stands off to the side and laughs.

As Patrick watches, Spencer looks over at him, catches his eye, smiles. Patrick grins back.

"Yeah," Patrick says finally, softly. "My band."

End.


End file.
